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FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN 
EUROPE 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



FOUNDATIONS OF 

MODERN EUROPE 

TWELVE LECTURES 

DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 

BY 

EMIL REICH 

DOCTOR JURIS. 

AUTHOR OF "GENERAL HISTORY OF WESTERN NATIONS," "ATLAS 

ANTIQUUS," " A NEW STUDENT'S ATLAS OF ENGLISH HISTORY," 

"GRAECO-ROMAN INSTITUTIONS," "HISTORY OF 

CIVILIZATION," ETC. 



SECOND, REVISED EDITION 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1908 

All rights reserved 






Vwo GQpiBS Ifl 

ifrpyffgm tnuy 
BUSS A W 



Copyright, 1908, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1908. 



Nntfonoto i^regjs 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

THE present work attempts to give a short sketch 
of the main facts and tendencies of European 
history that, from the year 1756 onwards, have con- 
tributed to the making of the present state of politics 
and civilization. It has grown out of a series of public 
lectures which the author delivered at the request of 
the University of London in the central hall of the 
University, in South Kensington, London, during the 
Lent term of 1903. The author is fully aware of 
the mass and apparent unwieldiness of the innumerable 
details known about the period, which, it would appear, 
it is almost an insolence to attempt to describe in a 
small book of a couple of hundred pages. Yet it may 
be urged that in history, as well as in nature, the greater 
the extent of movements and phenomena in general, 
the more readily must they yield to certain general 
formulation. There is no Kepler's law for the move- 
ments of tiny leaves falling in autumn ; but we have 
long known the laws regulating the movements of the 
planets. The events of history from 1756 to 181 5 are 
so vast and so plastic, that on that very account they 
can more easily be treated and summarized than could, 
for instance, the incoherent and meaningless facts of 
the history of some negro state in Africa. 

Throughout the lectures (and the present work) the 
main object was to indicate not only the body of the 



vi PREFACE 

general facts, but more particularly their soul, their 
meaning. In that, very probably, the author has fre- 
quently been mistaken ; just as he cannot help stating, 
that other writers on the same period have not always 
been successful in reading aright the drift or the causes 
of modern history. The author craves permission to 
assure the reader that he has not only carefully read a 
considerable number of the original " sources " bearing 
on the period from 1756 to 1871, but also that he has 
tried to acquire an intimate and personal acquaintance 
with the nations whose modern history he has en- 
deavoured to trace. An acquaintance ever so intimate 
with the life and language of each of the leading modern 
nations is, by itself, no guarantee for a correct insight 
into their history and civilization. Yet, on the other 
hand, we cannot but state in rather uncompromising 
terms that no amount of patient research in archives 
or books can ever be held to replace that living know- 
ledge of nations which a lengthy sojourn in the different 
countries, rendered more instructive by the fight for 
life in those countries, can alone convey. To write 
the history of a country not only neatly or eruditely, 
but well, one must love that country, one must have 
much suffered and much enjoyed in that country. 
History ought indeed to be written quellengerecht (from 
and in keeping with the sources), as the Germans call 
it ; however, it is usually overlooked that the most 
abundant as well as safest historical " source " is to be 
found in that very personal acquaintance with five to 
six essentially different types of modern national civil- 
ization, which it is somewhat difficult to acquire in the 
silent vaults of archives alone. 



PREFACE Vll 

The author takes this opportunity to thank the nu- 
merous ladies and gentlemen who have honoured him 
with their attendance, for their patience and kindness. 
A Hungarian is, as a rule, sure of sympathy in Great 
Britain ; yet the spirit of absolute fairness with which 
the audience received many an opinion running counter 
to some of the best cherished national views of history, 
was very much more than could be expected in many 
another country. May the readers of this book extend 
the same fairness to views prompted neither by malice, 
nor, it is hoped, by inexcusable ignorance. 

EMIL REICH. 
London, 

33, St. Luke's Road, W., 

January 14, 1904. 



CONTENTS 

LECTURE PAGE 

I. The War of American Independence, i 763-1 783 1 

II. The French Revolution. — I .... 26 

III. The French Revolution. — II .... 40 

IV. Napoleon. — I 48 

V. Napoleon. — II 63 

VI. Napoleon. — Ill 84 

VII. Napoleon. — IV 105 

VIII. The Reaction 128 

IX. The Revolutions 156 

X. The Unity of Italy 172 

XI. The Unity of Germany 184 

XII. The Franco-German War 207 

Epilogue 220 

Index 225 



FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN 
EUROPE, 1 760-187 1 

I 

THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 
I 763-1 783 

THE history of the great war of American Inde- 
pendence suffers from a peculiar combination of 
circumstances, all making for oblivion or neglect of the 
true causes and real trend of its momentous events. 
The Americans themselves, with few exceptions, have 
related it in the manner in which, from the Hellenes 
downwards, all great nations have arranged rather than 
stated the beginnings of their ultimate grandeur. The 
vanity of nations, growing apace with their real great- 
ness, nay, constantly outmarching it, has done, in this 
case, what it never fails to do in cases of even much 
smaller dimensions : vanity has been fighting its clever 
and deceptive rearguard-fights, in order to hide or let 
escape the really important corps of combatants. In 
the States the name of Lafayette is seen and heard in 
each town, in each county, in each state. Innumerable 
streets, very numerous towns and institutions, parks, etc., 
are named after the young French Marquis, who, in 
reality, performed none of the decisive or important acts 



2 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

or measures leading to the independence of the thirteen 
colonies. Of Vergennes or Beaumarchais, on the other 
hand, few, if any, Americans have ever heard a word of 
praise or appreciation. Even Captain Mahan {Influence 
of Sea-Power, 1660-1783, p. 345) speaks of "a French- 
man named Beaumarchais." As a matter of fact, the 
influence of Beaumarchais was, one may boldly say, im- 
measurably greater than that of Lafayette. The vast 
admiration bestowed upon the French aristocrat has 
undoubtedly been suggested for the sake of saving the 
pride of the Americans. Flattery to Lafayette does 
not imply the serious reduction of American merit 
which recognition of Beaumarchais would unmistakably 
entail. 

As with Lafayette, so with the decisive military move- 
ments of the war. The Americans who, single-handed, 
won only one important success, the surrender of the 
British army at Saratoga, have naturally enough no 
strong interest whatever in dwelling on the decisive 
and clinching naval manoeuvres of the summer of 1781, 
which were conducted solely by the French. As in the 
case of the contemporary Italians, who won their unity 
at the hands of the same nation that drove the English 
from the American colonies, the new nation feels only a 
cold gratitude towards its saviour friend. Each would 
wax very indignant were it to be told that, one in the 
period from 1775 to 1783, the other from 1859 to 1866, 
was the godfather rather than the father of its own 
liberty and independence. In saying that, we mean no 
irony whatever. As gratitude appears to be a native 
quality of some animals rather than of man, and would, 
moreover, ill suit the "state of nature" in which nations 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 3 

have always stood to one another ; so, on the other 
hand, extremely few nations have been honoured by 
the gods with the gift and opportunity of Marathon, 
Salamis, or Plataea. 

As to English narrators of the great war, it is need- 
less to prove that they have never been overeager to 
admit, that in 1781 they met, at the hands of the 
French, with a Waterloo far more destructive of British 
interests than was the last battle of Napoleon to the 
interests of France. Moreover, the documents in the 
Record Office in London are, as a rule, not fully acces- 
sible after the date of October 20th, 1760. 

Finally, the French, the real victors in that great 
struggle, have never cared to go into the details of an 
" affaire" all the actors and events of which were soon 
obscured and overshadowed by the gigantic tragedy of 
the French Revolution. It was only some thirteen 
years ago, that the French, in H. Doniol's Histoire de 
la participation de la France a Vestablissement des Etats- 
[fnis, received many of the official documents bearing 
on the interference of France in America ; and to be 
quite correct, Doniol's great work was terminated only 
a short time ago. As to the allies of the French at that 
time, the Spanish and the Dutch, their important inter- 
ference has as yet not been written up in a satisfactory 
historical work. 

These are the peculiar circumstances rendering a fair 
view of all the factors in the War of American Inde- 
pendence a matter of great difficulty. On the other 
hand, the historian must necessarily look for consolation 
to the just remark, that the larger, the more comprehen- 
sive the waves of historical events, the smaller is the 



4 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

number of their controlling causes. The study of the 
history of science cannot but confirm us in the belief, 
that vast movements are caused not by a concourse of 
an infinite number of small causes, but a restricted num- 
ber of large causes. Newton's triumph in proving the 
correctness of the simple assumption of gravitation, sug- 
gested or implied by Kepler, Bullialdus, and others, as 
a satisfactory explanation of the vast motions in our 
planetary system, is both the best illustration and the 
strongest proof of the doctrine of diminishing number 
of causes in increasingly vast movements. 

It will accordingly not be impossible to discover, in 
the immense maze of persons, events, and measures fill- 
ing the canvas of time from 1775 to 1783, a few of the 
controlling causes shaping events, directing its currents, 
and covering its undercurrents. 

The War of American Independence is held to be, 
more particularly with the English-speaking nations, a 
matter preeminently of English or American history. 

It is in reality and par excellence a European, an inter- 
national event. It happened in a period when for al- 
most exactly two hundred years, all the great wars were 
European wars. From 161 8 to 18 15 Europe was rav- 
aged, with few important exceptions, by international, 
or inter-European wars only. In strong contrast to this 
broad fact we note, that Europe has, since 181 5, care- 
fully avoided such international wars, and always suc- 
ceeded in localizing combats that threatened to set ablaze 
the whole of Europe, such as the Crimean war, or the 
Franco-German war. This desistance from international 
wars has, it may be advanced, little or nothing to do with 
the progress of ethical ideals, the realization of which 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 5 

has not yet left the precincts of pious hopes. It is 
due to the fact that since 18 15 each of the Great Powers 
of Europe has secured its territorial self-contentedness. 
Previous to 181 5 each of the continental states consisted 
of a great, occasionally bewildering, number of " en- 
claves " (see p. 220) straggling over various latitudes ; 
so that Prussia, or Austria, or Bavaria had no territorial 
unity whatever. The direct consequence was, that each 
of these states, having vulnerable points in all directions, 
was deeply interested in the policy of all the neighbour- 
ing nations which, eventually, might encroach upon or 
further its own territorial hopes. After 181 5 the num- 
ber of " enclaves " was more and more reduced, so that 
Germany, France, Austria, Italy, etc., have long since 
ceased to lack territorial unity. Unless, therefore, one 
of these countries is attacked directly, it has no seri- 
ous interest in meddling with the affairs of the other 
nations. 

In the eighteenth century the case was quite differ- 
ent. The war of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1713; 
the war of the Austrian Succession, 1740- 1748; the 
great war (" Seven Years' War") of Frederick the 
Great, 1 756-1 763; the wars of the French Revolution, 
1 792-181 5 : all of them were international wars proper. 
In all of them substantial, i.e. territorial, interests of all 
the Great Powers of Europe were engaged, and all of 
them were settled by international treaties of peace, 
such as the peace of Utrecht and Rastadt, 171 3 and 
1 7 14; the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748; the treaties 
of Hubertusburg and Paris, 1763 ; and the treaties of 
Basle, 1795, Campo Formio, 1797, Luneville, 180 1, 
Amiens, 1802, Pressburg, 1805, Tilsit, 1807, Vienna 



6 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

(or Schonbrunn), 1809, and the Congress of Vienna, 
1814-1815. 

The American War of Independence is one of these 
international, or inter-European events of the eighteenth 
century, terminated by the (second) treaty of Paris, 1783. 
As in the second half of the nineteenth century, France 
and Prussia and England had strong political interests 
in promoting the unity of Italy, so it was in the sixties 
and seventies of the eighteenth century a vital interest of 
I some of the Great Powers of Europe outside England to 
wrest the American colonies from the British. This is 
the essence of the whole struggle extending over eight 
years, and fought in all the seas of the four continents. 

But while this inter-European interest is undoubtedly 
the chief motor and cause of the ultimate success of 
the colonists in America, we must, on careful investi- 
gation of the facts, take into consideration the interests 
of those colonists themselves. Much as France, Spain, 
and Holland desired to weaken and humiliate England, 
their combined efforts would have proved inefficient, 
had the colonists not been induced to persevere in the 
attempt at severance from the mother-country in the 
teeth of all the misery and despair that a struggle with 
mighty England could not but entail. In order, there- 
fore, to seize adequately the home or American cause 
of the Revolt and its ultimate success, we must, before 
going into the details of inter-European policy, study 
the true cause of that powerful discontent that urged 
the colonists first into adverse reflections, then into 
threatening petitions, riotous acts, half disloyal con- 
ventions and congresses, overt acts of rebellion, and 
finally into open war against England. 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 7 

The current view of the causes of discontent is 
centred on the indignation of the colonists at the 
various measures of unconstitutional, or, at any rate, 
unwise taxation of the American colonies proposed, 
in turn, by Grenville, Townshend, North, and, chief 
of all, by George III. The Stamp Act of 1765, the 
taxes on various commodities in 1770, 1772, and 
1774 — these and similar measures, although in no 
way financially oppressive to the colonists (the taxes 
never yielded more, nor could yield more, than a paltry 
sum) are said to have, in addition to single and 
isolated acts of high-handed autocracy, so exasperated 
the fine moral or legal fibre of the colonists as to 
drive them into rebellion. This explanation has the 
advantage of being pleasing both to the British and 
the Americans. The British, with a smile of parental 
pride, enjoy the spectacle of their own kin rushing 
into revolt for ideal motives of Right and Law that 
animated the breasts, it is held, of the barons on the 
fields of Runnymede in King John's time (121 5), or 
in the clouded age of the Oxford Provisions (1258), 
let alone in the classic period of the " Nineteen 
Propositions" (June, 1642), or the "Bill of Rights" 
(1688). Or, as Tennyson says: 

" O thou, that sendest out the man 
To rule by land and sea, 
Strong mother of a Lion-line, 
Be proud of those strong sons of thine 
Who wrenched their rights from thee ! " 

The Americans again, with a distinctly British passion 
for ethical beating of the breast, delight and thus 
believe in the deep moral indignation of the men and 



8 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

women of the colonies as the main cause of the deep- 
seated discontent that broke out in the grave events 

of 1775. 

Without in the least trying to minimize the value 
and theoretical beauty of moral indignation, it may 
be intimated that such ethical shivers do not, as a 
rule, prove of long duration, unless supported by 
abiding considerations of material profit. Ideal motives 
are no doubt at work, stealthily or openly, in all the 
greater historic achievements of white humanity; but 
from their very intensity it must be inferred that their 
power of extension in time and space is always some- 
what limited. The profound wisdom of the Christian 
Religion has manifested itself in few things to a 
greater advantage than in the firm, if not original 
establishment of one ideal day in seven, this being 
about the true ratio of the force of ideal motives to 
motives savouring more of terrestrial and mundane 
sources. In historical investigations, at any rate, it 
will be wiser, if not nobler, to search, in any long and 
wearisome struggle, for causes less ethereal and more 
compact and concrete. 

Nor is it a matter of inordinate difficulty to point 
out that compact and concrete cause which, in all 
human probability, did infinitely more in stiffening 
the hearts and minds of the colonials, than could ever 
be done by the abstract reasonings on constitutional 
questions by Otis and Richard Bland, or by the moral 
uprising of the Puritans of New England. History, in 
Europe, and still more outside Europe, is written 
largely, if not wholly, in characters of that geography, 
or, as we prefer to call it, geo-politics, that has, as the 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 9 

true bass of the harmonic and enharmonic melodies of 
history, determined the trend and tenor of decisive 
events. Undoubtedly history is not a mere game of 
chess, in which man figures only as an insignificant 
pawn. Yet, with all due recognition of the influence 
of men, and especially of historic personalities, we can- 
not but arrive at the conclusion that man is inclined, 
precipitated, or retarded, by that Great Constant, the 
Earth and its physiographic configuration. To use the 
language of the scientist: in history man represents 
the ordinate?, Earth the abscisses. It is evident that for 
a true construction of the curve of events, we must 
have the abscisses first, and then the ordinate?. 

There can be little doubt that the abiding, material, 
and yet, prospectively at least, also ideal cause of the 
deep-seated antagonism of the colonials to the British 
Government was the fatally wrong policy of the Court 
of St. James's with regard to the vast hinterland of the 
colonies. It was for the possession of that vast hinter- 
land, by treaty-rights stretching from the Alleghany 
Mountains to the Mississippi — practically, however, to 
the Pacific — that the colonials had cheerfully joined in 
the British war against the French from 1755 to 1762. 
It was already then well-known, from the writings of 
French Jesuits and other explorers, that the colonies 
were surrounded, or rather supplemented, by the most 
fertile and at the same time the vastest hinterland in 
history. Neither Central nor South America ; neither 
modern Egypt, nor South Africa, let alone Canada or 
Australia, are endowed with a hinterland at once so 
vast and so easily accessible or amenable to purposes 
of cultivation. In that hinterland, fully described in 



10 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the works of Jonathan Carver, Robert Rogers, James 
Adair, William Smith, and of other colonials long before 
the battle of Lexington, the colonials were conscious of 
having the possibility and the guarantee of indefinite 
progress and unlimited prosperity. As modern Russia, 
instead of wasting untold treasures of men and money 
in barren wars with Prussia or Austria, has consist- 
ently preferred to occupy and utilize its immense hinter- 
land from the Ural to Manchuria, even so the colonials 
in British America consciously or subconsciously felt 
that their real and great destiny was in their hinterland, 
and not in their connection with Great Britain. So 
clear was this, the all-decisive factor, to most thinking 
men of that time, that men as different in every other 
respect as were Montcalm, French commander of 
Canada ; Turgot, philosopher and economist ; and Ver- 
gennes, French ambassador at Constantinople, — all 
predicted the secession of the colonials as soon as the 
French were driven out from the Ohio valley and the 
Lakes district — that is, as soon as the question of 
the hinterland was made a problem of actual politics. 
King George III. had, however, no sooner concluded 
peace with the French in 1763, than he issued, on 
October 7th, 1763, a proclamation, in which the king's 
" loving subjects" in the colonies were forbidden to 
make purchases of land from the Indians, or to farm 
any settlement west of the Alleghany Mountains. Nor 
did this proclamation remain a dead letter. As late as 
1772 a colonial's petition for 'settlement on the Ohio 
River was categorically refused by the Lord Commis- 
sioners for Trade ; Lord Hillsborough holding that the 
proclamation of 1763 was too explicit to be interpreted 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE II 

in any other sense. This proclamation did not, of 
course, prevent numberless colonials from making re- 
peated attempts at the occupation of the forbidden 
hinterland. There are still numerous legal and admin- 
istrative documents in the Record Office in London, 
referring to the incessant encroachment of the colonials 
upon the territory west of the Alleghany Mountains. 
It is in these documents that we can feel the real pulse 
of the time. Nations, like individuals, are as a rule not 
clearly conscious of the prime motive prompting their 
actions. We cannot, therefore, expect the pamphleteers 
or m^moire writers of that time to tell us in set terms 
what was at the bottom of all that curiously persistent 
ill-will shown by most of the colonials to any kind of 
measures that the British Government proposed or de- 
creed. Any kind, we say. For it is now well known, 
that the British Government repeatedly, and after 1774 
almost invariably, behaved with all the conciliation that 
a loyal colony can fairly expect from its metropolis. It 
was all in vain. Neither the moderation of Chatham, 
nor the wisdom of Burke ; neither the cold imperious- 
ness of King George or Lord North, nor the ingenious 
argumentativeness of Fox could alter matters. The 
colonials were, and had long been, but too well resolved 
to accept no other solution than that of a complete rup- 
ture. Once carried away, and justly too, by the great 
destiny awaiting them at the bidding of the powers of 
the very soil they occupied and legitimately desired to 
extend, they were naturally unable to listen to or accept 
any possible offer short of one securing for them, undis- 
turbed and uncontrolled by British statutes or British 
capitalists, J:he vast expanse of fertile hinterland, at once 



12 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the inexhaustible source of their material, and the safe 
guarantee of their national, greatness. 

It is customary to condemn George III., Lord North, 
Townshend, and Grenville. But did Lord Chatham, 
Burke, or Fox discern the true causes of the American 
revolt any more clearly ? Did they seize the real, the 
ultimate cause of the colonials' discontent any better ? 
In fact, harsh or strange as it may seem, if guilt there 
must be, there is little doubt that Lord Chatham had a 
greater share in the loss of the colonies than had either 
George III. or Lord North. The colonials may have 
had, as they actually had, very potent motives to wish 
for a separation from England. From such a wish, 
though ever so legitimate, to its realization was, how- 
ever, a very far cry. England had never been more 
powerful, more enterprising, more dreaded, than from 
1763 to 1775. Her navy had had great and decisive 
successes in European, American, and Asiatic waters ; 
and her armies had shown great fighting powers in 
Germany, America, and India. For the first time in her 
history she found herself constituted as a real empire. 
Bengal, Behar, and Orissa in India were hers, since 
1764; the French were driven out of America, and 
their vast colonies conquered; in Europe her prestige 
was very great. Last not least, together with that un- 
precedented expansion of power — political and military 
— England just then started on her imposing career as 
the first industrial power of the world. Inventions in 
technology, such as no other nation could boast, were 
made in Great Britain almost daily, and the resources 
of British industry and commerce created a national 
wealth that bade fair to outstrip that of all other 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 13 

nations put together. Under such circumstances it was 
by no means easy to start a revolt against England 
with any sound hopes of ultimate success. Had Lord 
Chatham, in 1766 or 1767, practised the wise modera- 
tion of Bismarck in 1866, he might, by depriving the 
American colonials of French help, have so isolated 
them as to render any decisive military success on 
their part practically impossible. Bismarck in 1866 
suddenly, and in the midst of the most signal military 
triumph over Austria, abandoned the secular policy 
of Prussia towards Austria. He clearly perceived that 
that policy had, after Sadowa, no raison d'etre any 
longer. Far from yielding to the Prussian military 
party, which loudly clamoured for triumphal entry into 
Vienna, Bismarck threatened rather to commit suicide 
than to consent to any unnecessary humiliation of 
Austria, whose friendship he knew he would need later 
on, after having neutralized or paralyzed its hostility. 
Lord Chatham, after 1763, was placed in exactly the 
same position towards France that Bismarck held 
towards Austria in August, 1866. Hitherto, i.e. up to 
1763, France had been in reality, for various reasons, 
the hereditary enemy of England. After 1763 that 
enmity had, on the part of England, lost all its raison 
d'etre. England had no more colonies to take from 
France ; and no continental possession (Hanover) to 
dread from either Prussia or France. Scotland had 
definitively accepted its place within Great Britain 
since 1746, and Ireland was quiet; French intrigues 
could stir up neither. 

It was, then, evidently the policy for Chatham to 
irritate France as little as possible, in fact, to obtain 



14 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

her friendship. From her position in the very centre of 
all the Great Powers of the west, and also from her 
geographical configuration as both a sea- and land-power, 
France was almost more dangerous when on the de- 
fensive than when taking the offensive. In the latter 
case, France always roused (under Louis XIV. as well 
as under Napoleon) the hostility of the surrounding 
nations, and was obliged, even when unbeaten in the 
field, to give up her excessive ambition. When, how- 
ever, France is on the defensive, she always is and 
always will be able to form one of the most formidable 
factors in war. She can strengthen both the naval and 
the land forces of her allies on the most considerable 
scale, and thus contribute decisively to the final result. 
From this evident lesson of French history, together 
with the consideration mentioned above, Chatham had 
all imaginable motives of good policy for abandoning 
the secular idea of France as the hereditary enemy of 
England. The idea had no basis any longer. It was 
merely floating on the waters of political thinking by 
its very emptiness, by silly traditionalism. 

There is no better proof for this statement than an 
ever so brief consideration of the international and 
diplomatic position created during and by the Seven 
Years' War (i 756-1 763) in Europe. The same prob- 
lem that Chatham was confronted with in regard to 
the " hereditary enemy " of his country, presented it- 
self also to three other great governments of the time, 
to France, to Austria, and to Russia. In France an 
identical question had been mooted and intrigued 
about for some time. The Bourbons of France had 
always observed, as the keynote of their foreign 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 1 5 

policy, a very hostile attitude towards the Austrian 
Habsburgs. The Habsburgs were the "hereditary 
enemy " of the Bourbons. In the fifties of the eigh- 
teenth century, however, Count Kaunitz, the Austrian 
ambassador in Paris, and later on, his successor, 
Count Starhemberg, persuaded the French Govern- 
ment to abandon their secular enmity to Austria, and 
to conclude an alliance with the Habsburgs (December, 
1756, and again in 1757) against Prussia. This amaz- 
ing " about face," the triumph of the cunning and 
persistence of Kaunitz and Maria Theresa, was with- 
out question one of the least wise measures ever 
taken by a French king. That alliance could not, 
and did not, confer on France anything worth fighting 
for, and, as a matter of fact, proved to France a most 
fatal step, the immediate cause of all her disasters in 
America, Europe, and Asia from 1757 to 1763. It 
was concluded chiefly at the instigation of a young 
woman, La Marquise de Pompadour, the French king's 
mistress and first minister, who was destitute of the 
most elementary knowledge of politics. 

The problem, then, that Chatham failed to seize ade- 
quately after 1763, the French Government, that is, the 
Marquise de Pompadour, likewise failed to comprehend 
in 1756. Not so the two other monarchs, both women. 
Maria Theresa, brought up in the firm belief of the 
hereditary hostility between Habsburg and Bourbon — 
a belief to which she gave unguarded expression even 
after the Franco- Austrian alliance — Maria Theresa 
wisely suppressed her feelings and acquiesced, under 
somewhat humiliating conditions, in a complete revolu- 
tion in the foreign policy of her house. While she did 



1 6 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

not materially better her position by that unexpected 
move, yet she was able to inflict on Frederick's lands 
and people, if not on him, all the horrors of a seven 
years' war which barely touched her own provinces. 

The last of the women then controlling a great coun- 
try was Katharine II. of Russia. In 1762 she came to 
the throne, and soon rid herself of her insipid husband. 
She, too, was at once called upon to decide on the sense 
and direction of her foreign policy, more especially of 
that towards her neighbour, Prussia. At that time the 
Russians, as well as the Russian Government, had a 
firm belief that Prussia was the " hereditary enemy M of 
the Muscovites. Katharine's predecessor, the Czarina 
Elizabeth, had sacrificed millions of money and hun- 
dreds of thousands of men to that belief. But Katharine 
was not to be impressed by mere Chauvinist illu- 
sions. She clearly saw that Prussia, at enmity with 
France and Austria, could never become dangerous to 
Russia, while, on the other hand, Prussia was too poor 
to be a promising booty for Russia. So the late Ger- 
man princess, now Czarina of Russia, publicly declared 
with great show of indignation, that she too would un- 
swervingly continue the old Russian policy of hostility 
to that arch-fiend, the King of Prussia ; in private, how- 
ever, she sent, on the evening of the same day, a special 
courier to Frederick, assuring him that her public 
declaration was only meant for the official ear of the 
King, or, in other words, for the gallery in Russia. 
Nothing can prove Katharine's genius more conclu- 
sively. In assuring Frederick of her friendship, she 
proved what Russo-Prussian history has shown ever 
since, the correctness of her view, in that neither of the 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 1 7 

two countries has had, since 1762, a serious reason to 
make war on the other. 

It is somewhat discomforting to note that two women, 
Katharine and Maria Theresa, grasped the essentials of 
the political situation about the middle of the eighteenth 
century far better than did "the only man," to use 
Frederick's saying, to whom England had given birth 
at the same time. Chatham, before and after the treaty 
of 1763, invariably viewed France as the great enemy 
of England. He never tired of rousing the British 
national feeling against the "hereditary enemy." He 
could not but be aware that one single article of that 
treaty (Article XIII.) was alone sufficient to fill the 
French with an undying thirst for revenge. In that 
article France consented to the destruction of the fortifi- 
cations of her harbour at Dunkirk, in the most humili- 
ating fashion. It is said in that article : " La Cunette [at 
Dunkirk] sera detruite immediatement apres l'echange 
des ratifications du present traite, ainsi que les forts et 
batteries qui defendent l'entree du cote de la mer; et 
il sera pourvu, en meme temps, a la salubrite de l'air, 
et a la sante des habitants par quelque autre moyen a 
la satisfaction du Roi de la Grande Bretagne." 1 A 
high-spirited nation will never accept such arrogant 
dealing with a harbour and place of arms on her im- 
mediate territory. And if one considers, that England, 
by the acquisition of Canada and the vast American 

1 "The Cunette (at Dunkirk) shall be destroyed immediately after the 
exchange of ratifications of the present treaty, as well as the forts and bat- 
teries that defend the entrance from the sea ; and provision shall be made 
at the same time for insuring good air and the health of the inhabitants, 
by such means as shall be approved by the King of Great Britain." 
c 



1 8 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

hinterland had then acquired a territory more than 
sufficient for the widest imperial expansion of the Brit- 
ish nation for generations to come, and all that at the 
expense of France, it is rather difficult to comprehend 
why Chatham should still persist in rancorous hatred 
of France, a country no longer in a condition either to 
hurt or thwart the most ambitious hopes of Great Brit- 
ain. 

Yet so he did. Instead of doing what Katharine did 
with regard to Prussia, in 1762, or Bismarck with regard 
to Austria in 1866, Chatham continued to inflame his 
people with the old, now groundless hatred of France. 
It may be that his grave bodily infirmities reduced the 
clearness of his mind. At any rate, instead of pacify- 
ing France by all possible means, he never ceased to 
widen and envenom the wound from which France and 
the French were smarting. 

Under these circumstances it is only a matter of 
course that the French, a nation whose energy may be 
slackened but never suppressed, were eagerly on the 
lookout for an opportunity to avenge the treaty of 1763 
on the English. Nor did that opportunity fail to turn 
up. It was, in the first place, one of a more academic 
character, but it soon transformed itself into a chance 
of resorting to the gravest military and political meas- 
ures. The academic interference of the French with 
the immense American colonies of the English pro- 
ceeded in the shape of the impression exercised by the 
French Encyclopaedists on the colonials. 

The influence of Diderot, Rousseau, Montesquieu, 
Voltaire, Holbach, Condorcet, d'Alembert, and the 
other great authors of the famous Encyclopidie ou Die- 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 19 

tionnaire raisonnt des sciences ', des arts et des mHiers> on 
the whole mental attitude of Europe and America in 
the latter half of the eighteenth century, seems rather 
puzzling to the modern mind. On reading the articles 
of the Encydope'die (articles, it must be admitted, art- 
fully garbled by the timorous publisher) one cannot but 
be amazed both at the mildness and unaggressiveness 
of their tone, and at the relatively small originality of 
their ideas. In our times, we have seen articles and 
books propounding doctrines infinitely bolder and more 
radical. The novelty of the Encydope'die was not in its 
doctrines; its historic position was determined by the 
marvellous effect it had on its contemporaries. Doc- 
trines formerly discussed in Latin folios meant for re- 
cluse scholars ; such as the political views of Spinoza, 
or of Althusius, were now for the first time placed 
before the general public in a form at once solid and 
attractive. To this the personality of the Encyclopae- 
dists contributed not a little. The brilliant men meet- 
ing in the salons of those women famous for their tact 
and charm, Madame Geoffrin, Mademoiselle de L'Es- 
pinasse, Madame d'Epinay, and others, were one and all 
men of intense powers of personal fascination. Their 
conversations were listened to, reported, and read all 
over the civilized world, and it is probably understating 
the reality when we compare the influence of the con- 
versations, letters, and pamphlets of the Encyclopae- 
dists to the moral and intellectual influence exerted 
nowadays by the "leaders" and articles of the great 
representatives of the press. 

One of the most impressive of the works of the En- 
cyclopaedists was the Du Contrat Social of Rousseau, 



20 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

published in 1762. Written in language the splendour 
and clearness of which have rarely been equalled, it 
contains a body of political teaching appealing with a 
passionate warmth to the deepest political cravings of 
the masses. It was inevitable that a political work by 
the author of La Nouvelle Heloise and Emile, then the 
most famous novels of the day, should rapidly find its 
way into the colonies in America, where the latent and 
unavowed wishes of the people made them only too 
prone to views such as Rousseau propagated in lan- 
guage aglow with all the inspirations of passion and 
truth. It is certain, and can easily be proved in detail, 
that the political views of the wayward Genevese and 
of his colleagues of the Encyclopedic had a very consid- 
erable effect on the colonials, amongst whom they were 
eagerly read and discussed. The "imponderable" in- 
fluence of these French ideas must not be undervalued, 
although it cannot be credited with a force of the first 
magnitude. Far greater was the second, or more mate- 
rial interference of France in the great struggle of the 
colonials against Great Britain. 

That material influence was set in motion chiefly 
by a man whose entire moral and literary personality 
seemed to destine him for exploits of a totally different 
kind. We mean Beaumarchais. A thorough Parisian, 
full of the inexhaustible verve and dash of his own im- 
mortal creation, " Figaro " in his Le Mariage de Figaro, 
Beaumarchais was watchmaker, inventor, harpist to the 
court, promoter of interminable and vast business enter- 
prises, publisher of Voltaire's works, author of an im- 
mortal comedy, incomparable pamphleteer, involved in 
endless intrigues, duels, adventures, and political secret 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 21 

missions to England and Germany, — in short, a man of the 
most astounding vitality and resourcefulness. His wit and 
superb literary gift irradiated the most commonplace of 
his actions, and his fundamentally honest and generous 
nature ennobled his life with the glory of true manliness. 
Bold, intrepid, a battler and fighter of a thousand com- 
bats legal or political, he was all through his life a warm- 
hearted, true man. No one could have applied Rostand's 
famous lines with greater aptness to himself : 

" And wearing my exploits like ornaments, 
Twirling my wits, as one would a moustache, 
Passing among the crowds and scattered groups, 
I make Truth ring out, brave as ringing spurs ! " 

It was this " frivolous Frenchman " who had long 
made up his mind to avenge his country on England, 
and to wipe out the shame of the treaty of 1763 in 
the most terrible loss ever caused to Great Britain. He 
clearly foresaw the war long before it actually broke 
out, and by means of incessant memorializing of the 
French, and later of the Spanish Government too, he in- 
spired Vergennes, the great foreign minister of France, 
and likewise Aranda, Vergennes's colleague in Spain, 
and prevailed upon them to support his vast plans. At 
first two, then more, million francs were placed at the 
disposal of the author of " Figaro " by the two Bourbon 
Governments, and Beaumarchais, almost two years 
before France and Spain openly declared war against 
England, established his headquarters at Le Havre, 
under the name of Rodrigue Hortalks et Cie. It was 
from Havre that Beaumarchais sent to the Americans 
vast stores of tents, provisions, and equipments of all 
kinds, amongst others, 30,000 rifles, over 200 cannon, 



22 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

etc., in 1776 and 1777. " My fleets," as he called them, 
were in constant connection with the colonials, and his 
lieutenants, more particularly de Kalb and the indis- 
pensable Steuben, were organizing the army of the 
colonials. His correspondence with his captains, officers, 
and his home government ; his dealings, frequently far 
from pleasant, with Arthur Lee, Silas Deane, and the 
stately and prudent Franklin in Paris, were numberless. 
He never was at a loss how to meet the countless emer- 
gencies of financial or military embarrassment, and it is 
only the sober truth to say, that without his genius and 
energy the Americans could not have carried on the 
war in the first two years. With all the staunch vigour 
and honesty of Washington, the American army, as 
is now well known, suffered very severely from de- 
sertion, treachery, indifference, pusillanimity. It was 
France, it was, previous to the summer of 1778, Beaumar- 
chais, who never flagged, never despaired, never failed to 
send help where help was most needed. His merit was 
never recognized by the government of the Republic, and 
when, many years later, reduced almost to indigence, 
he asked for partial reimbursement of his undoubted 
personal losses in the service of the United States, he 
and his children met with the coldest and, let us confess, 
most unjustifiable ingratitude. No statue to his honour 
has ever been erected in any public place in America ; 
to most Americans he is either quite unknown, or known 
only as a clever playwright. The Americans have, very 
late it is true, at last raised a statue to Rochambeau, one 
of the two Frenchmen to whom the clinching victories 
in 1 78 1 are due. One would like to entertain the hope 
that they will see their way to raise several similar 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 23 

monuments to him who, more than any other single 
non-military man, helped them to raise the noble fabric 
of their national independence. 

The war itself, although its extent both in time and 
space was of the most considerable dimensions, is in 
reality a very simple event. It lasted for eight years 
and was carried on in the eastern territory of the United 
States, and in nearly all the seas. The strategic prob- 
lem was reduced to the question of sea-power. As 
long as the British were able to hold the Atlantic, they 
could easily pour ever new armies (if mostly hired ones) 
into the colonies. Once the British lost the command 
of the sea, their hold on the American colonies was 
practically lost. The colonials, by their victory at 
Saratoga in October, 1777, where less than 4000 British 
soldiers, under Burgoyne, were forced to surrender to 
14,000 colonials, under Gates, had practically secured 
the possession of the northern colonies before the third 
year of the war was over; but New York, the central, 
and the southern colonies were still controlled by Clinton, 
Cornwallis, and other British commanders. However, 
in August and September, 1781, the French, under 
the Comte de Grasse, baffled all the attempts of the 
British admirals, Hood and Graves, to enter Chesapeake 
Bay for the purpose of relieving Cornwallis, who was 
besieged in Yorktown by a Franco-American army con- 
sisting of about 7000 men each under Rochambeau 
and Washington. The naval engagements of de Grasse 
lasted for five days, and were fought off Cape Henry. 
This all-important battle, or series of battles, which 
definitively deprived the British of the command of the 
sea in the middle Atlantic, and which sealed the fate of 



24 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Cornwallis; this naval Waterloo of the British — is one 
of the least noticed military events of modern times. 
Not one Englishman or American in ten thousand has 
ever heard the name of the battle of Cape Henry. The 
full details of that clinching victory have never been 
published, and in books on the American War the 
battle is, as a rule, given neither its precise name, nor 
placed in the right historic perspective. It was, in reality, 
not a very dramatic affair. This, however, need not de- 
ceive any one into a false construction of its fundamental 
importance. Battles, like men, are important, not for 
their dramatic splendour, but for their efficiency and con- 
sequences. The battle of the White Mountain, in 1620, 
was really no serious fight at all ; while the battle of 
Marengo, in 1800, was, as far as Napoleon was con- 
cerned, a positive defeat of the French army. Yet by 
the " affair " of the White Mountain the Bohemians 
have lost their independence to the present day ; and 
by Marengo, Napoleon, or rather Desaix, established 
the first Empire. The battle off Cape Henry had ulti- 
mate effects infinitely more important than those of 
Waterloo. Even the naval victories won by Le Bailli 
de Suffren in the seas between Madras and Ceylon over 
the British fleet in 1782 and 1783, cannot, in point of 
effect, compare with the decisive advantage obtained by 
de Grasse off Cape Henry. Suffren's victories remained 
barren ; de Grasse's action entailed upon the British the 
final loss of the thirteen colonies in America. What the 
French Encyclopaedists had done by suggestion, and 
what Beaumarchais had set in movement by ingenious 
personal exertion, de Grasse had brought to a termina- 
tion by a successful naval engagement. 



THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 25 

It is customary to accuse Napoleon of having fool- 
ishly overreached himself. It is likewise a common- 
place to blame Louis XIV. for an ambition striving for 
the absurd idea of subjugating Europe. It is less 
known that George III. failed in his attempt of retain- 
ing the thirteen colonies within the British Empire 
chiefly because of an ambition essentially identical 
with that of Napoleon and Louis XIV. King George 
did not, it is true, try to dominate Europe, he only 
attempted to defy the leading powers of Europe. While 
fighting the Americans, he had the boldness to fight 
the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch too, rousing 
at the same time the hostility of the Baltic Powers. 
As Louis XIV., for a similar defiance, suffered the de- 
feats of Blenheim, Turin, and Malplaquet; and as 
Napoleon, for the same crime of defying Europe, was 
crushed at Leipsic and at Waterloo ; so King George, 
committing the same fatal error, lost England's princi- 
pal force, her sea-power, and thus the vastest and most 
fertile colonies ever possessed by an empire. Europe, 
the heir of Hellenic intellect and Roman military 
strength, can be defied neither by any one or two 
European powers, nor by the rest of the non-European 
countries put together. Persia fell for defying Hellas ; 
Carthage sank for opposing Rome; the United States 
arose mainly owing to England's unwise defiance of 
Europe in the eighteenth century. 



II 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — I 

THE French Revolution is undoubtedly the most 
important event of modern history. As we can- 
not distinctly trace its origin, so we cannot clearly 
point out its termination in time or space ; for like a 
great wave in agitated seas it is still spreading to 
countries that in the eighteenth century took no notice 
of it ; and as a matter of fact it seems more adequate 
to consider the French Revolution as only one part of 
an immense European revolution which assumed a politi- 
cal and aggressive form in France, while in Germany 
it was clothed in forms literary and philosophical. 
It is more than a coincidence that the vast revolu- 
tionary upheaval in France culminated in the immense 
personality of Napoleon ; while in Germany the equally 
vast intellectual stir culminated in the Jupiter of Ger- 
man thought — Goethe. 

The uniqueness and grandeur of the French Revo- 
lution are alone sufficient to render an explanation ex- 
ceedingly difficult, more especially when we attempt, 
as we should, to give a specific explanation. 

It has been customary to account for historical facts 
by general ethical remarks on human nature, or on the 
temper of the French, of the German, or the English. 
However, the very generality of these explanations de- 
prives them of any real value. 

26 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — I 27 

For the historian proper, the problem of the French 
Revolution stands thus : how are we to account for the 
outbreak of that Revolution under Louis XVI., consid- 
ering that the long reign of Louis XV. (171 5-1 774) 
was to all intents and purposes a far more likely time 
for a revolution in France ? 

Under Louis XV. the French people had an ever in- 
creasing number of motives to criticise, to fall foul of, 
to attack, and finally to subvert the government. Many 
of those abuses were removed under Louis XVI. ; in 
fact, the government of Louis XVI. under Turgot, 
Necker, even Calonne, worked heroically at the re- 
moval of the worst abuses of the old French monarchy. 

Moreover, the foreign policy of Louis XVI. was, in 
comparison with that of Louis XV., a most brilliant 
advance. Louis XV. was mortally humiliated by Eng- 
land in the Peace of 1763. England was mortally hu- 
miliated in turn by Louis XVI. in the Peace of 1783^ 
Vergennes, at the head of foreign policy in France 
under Louis XVI., was in the highest degree success- 
ful, and yet the people, far from acknowledging the 
good intentions of the government at home, and its 
great successes abroad, continued to be dissatisfied, 
and finally broke out in the ever famous Revolution of 
1789. Unless we can account for this specific date, or 
at any rate for the connection of the Revolution with 
Louis XVI.'s reign, we have fulfilled but very poorly 
our real task as historian. 

If now we view the well-known works of Taine, 
Tocqueville, Sybel, Buckle, Sorel, and others, on the 
French Revolution, we shall at once see that neither 
the apparently scientific and cold analysis of Taine, nor 



28 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the philosophical reflections of Tocqueville, neither the 
laborious arguments of the learned German professor, 
nor the dignified diplomatic phrases of Sorel, have in 
reality advanced our insight into the causes of the 
French Revolution. 

After all these, and similar authors, we still fail to 
see (i) why the French Revolution broke out under 
Louis XVI. and not before, and (2) why it at once as- 
sumed dimensions so colossal, so intense, as to dwarf 
any other historical movement, such as the Renaissance 
or the Reformation, into comparative insignificance. 

The sober truth is, we do not understand the French 
Revolution. Auerbach once said that most people were 
not yet " Goethe reif" {i.e. ripe for the understanding 
of Goethe). We must confess that we are not yet 
" Revolution-ripe " ; and that, in spite of the serious 
and philosophical studies devoted to that Revolution, 
the best part of our knowledge of that great event is 
probably still contained in the classical witticism of 
Boerne : " One man alone could have prevented the 
French Revolution — Adam — if he had drowned him- 
self before his marriage." 

While acknowledging the exceeding difficulty of ac- 
counting for the French Revolution, we may yet try to 
point out one or two of the circumstances hitherto un- 
noticed or neglected as the precursors, if not the spe- 
cific causes of the French Revolution. 

It is well known that the prevalent opinion ascribes 
the French Revolution to the intolerable anarchy and 
oppression degrading the people of France under the 
ancien regime. 

Works, such as the books of the famous Arthur 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.— I 29 

Young, who travelled through France shortly before the 
outbreak of the French Revolution, are quoted to prove 
the utter misery of the peasantry and smaller bourgeoisie 
(middle classes), and the wretched decadence of the no- 
bility. However, it has long been proved that Arthur 
Young had been completely taken in by the most art- 
ful of innocents in Europe, i.e. by the peasantry of 
France. It is indeed somewhat grotesque to assume, as 
Arthur Young did, that any peasant would reveal to him 
what he as a rule does not even communicate to his wife, 
that is, all the details of his household and farm. 

We now positively know that in districts of France 
where the people were stated (by Arthur Young) to 
have been utterly poor, they had during that time made 
extensive purchases of land and farms. The economic 
history of peasants cannot be written from their own 
oral statements. It must be looked for in acts of nota- 
ries and other legal documents. 

The alleged misery of the people under the ancien 
regime was, it is now admitted, very much less severe 
under Louis XVI. than under Louis XV. On the other 
hand, we have positive knowledge (not only from the 
well-known discourse of Savaron) that the people under 
Louis XIII. (1614) were literally crushed down by the 
most abject misery. 

It is true that Savaron said to Louis XIII. : " Que 
diriez-vous, sire, si vous aviez vu dans vos pays de 
Guyenne et d'Auvergne les hommes paitre l'herbe a 
la maniere de betes ? " 1 Yet the (Catholic) people 
never rose under Louis XIII. 

1 " What would you say, Sire, if you had seen in your territories of 
Guyenne and Auvergne, men eating grass like beasts? " 



30 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

The circumstance above alluded to as probably one 
of the preparatory causes of the French Revolution is 
the startling homogeneity of the French people. In 
modern times, more especially in America, we are so 
used to the phenomenon of millions of people conform- 
ing to one and the same standard of religion, opinions, 
dress, and manners, that we easily forget that in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such homoge- 
neous masses were by far the exception. In the seven- 
teenth century a Provencal or a Breton would have 
taken it almost as an insult to be called a Frenchman. 
In the seventeenth century, previous to 1685 (Revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes), there was in France a 
very considerable number of Huguenots, that is, people 
who had, besides the language, very little in common 
with the rest of Catholic France. Nay, within Catho- 
lic France the Jansenists formed a most distinct, and 
most characteristically differentiated, group of people. 
In various provinces there still pulsated an autonomous 
life of their own, and the social strata were still so sepa- 
rated from one another as to make the bourgeois practi- 
cally an impossibility in the refined drawing-rooms of 
the aristocracy or the court. 

France was in the seventeenth century very far from 
being a homogeneous nation. The complaint of one 
class or one group found no echo in that of another 
group, and could thus acquire no momentum of politi- 
cal importance. Complaints (doleances) such as were 
submitted by the whole of France in 1 788-1 789, were 
of frequent occurrence, even in the seventeenth century ; 
but the complaints of one province, or sect, or class 
met with so little encouragement on the part of other 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — I 3 1 

provinces, sects, or classes, that they invariably ended 
in sheer indifference and neglect. When, on the 
other hand, we regard France under Louis XVI. we 
are struck with a most remarkable homogeneity of the 
people. 

The Huguenots had been expelled in 1685 ; the Jan- 
senists suppressed by the Bull Unigenitus, 1713. The au- 
tonomous rights and local political life of various prov- 
inces had been levelled out by the great centralizations 
of Colbert, Louvois, and the other great ministers of 
Louis XIV., and the bourgeoisie under Louis XV. had 
penetrated into most of the aristocratic salons. The 
bourgeois furnished the great types of the stage, they 
monopolized nearly the whole intellect of France, and 
claimed successfully the recognition of social equality. 

This homogeneity then had caused the mental atti- 
tude of most Frenchmen to be the same, at least with 
regard to certain fundamental principles of politics, phi- 
losophy, and society. This homogeneity must, we take 
it, be admitted as the first and indispensable condition 
of the great event called the French Revolution. For 
what do we find ? As soon as clever or important 
thoughts on politics were published in Paris, whether 
in pamphlet form, in a book, or in a discourse (whether 
it was Turgot, Necker, Condorcet, the Abbe Sieyes, or 
some provincial municipality), the rest of France, or 
certainly the majority of Frenchmen, at once took it 
up, discussed it, refuted it, accepted it ; in short, in- 
tensely interested themselves in it. This was a new 
phenomenon. 

The obscure official in the Dauphine, whose political 
reflections would have fallen stillborn from the press 



32 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

thirty years before, was now, in the eighties of the 
eighteenth century, sure of a hearing, of an audience, 
of a general discussion. So great and intense was that 
growing homogeneity that it extended even to common 
human sentiments. From July 27th to August 1st, 
1789, happened what is commonly called La grande 
penr. Suddenly, in a most inexplicable manner, the 
rural population of the whole of France was smitten 
with a most mysterious fear — with a common physical 
fear of brigands, robbers, and burglars, who were ex- 
pected to roam over the whole of France, sacking and 
pillaging everything they could lay hands on. The 
fear was pure imagination ; there were no brigands, no 
burglars. The graiide pear unmistakably proves that 
in addition to and beyond the mental homogeneity of 
the people, there was a homogeneity of sentiments, of 
sensation. People thought the same way and felt the 
same way; nothing was more natural than that they 
should act the same way. For the first time in French 
history the French became conscious of their unity, as a 
people, and of their strength. Once the French people 
became conscious of their strength it was only too natu- 
ral that they should attempt to assert their rights against 
the crown. 

The crown, unfortunately, was then held by two per- 
sons, neither of whom had by nature or education the 
power to wield or to articulate the wishes of the people. 
King Louis XVI. was limited in mind, small in character, 
and indifferent in temper. Nothing characterizes him 
better than the famous entry in his diary on the day of 
the taking of the Bastille, that is, on the day when the 
most formidable onslaught on French monarchical insti- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — I 33 

tutions was made. Rien> "Nothing," was the entry in 
the King's diary for that day. As to Marie Antoinette, 
she was an Austrian proper, that is, a woman endowed 
with many charms, but none of a serious character. 
Often, indeed, it may be said that she was possessed of 
deficiencies that had no corresponding virtues, and her 
very advantages were devoid of efficiency. She was 
pleasure-loving, undiscerning, hare-brained ; she repelled 
all the men of importance, and loved to pass her time in 
the presence of mediocrities. Personally virtuous, she 
yet had none of the powers of female virtue. She re- 
sisted her passion for Fersen, the Swedish chevalier, and 
yet did not know how to make use of Fersen in critical 
moments. The powers of the French nation set in mo- 
tion by the homogeneity mentioned above, could there- 
fore be neither controlled nor guided by the King or the 
Queen. Moreover, the extreme prodigality of the Queen 
(she permitted Calonne to buy her St. Cloud and Ram- 
bouillet for a sum of about twenty million francs, at a 
time when the French finances were in the lowest pos- 
sible condition) was not likely to endear her to an ex- 
ceedingly thrifty people like the French ; and when in 
August, 1786, the famous necklace trial was practically 
decided against her, her prestige had suffered an irre- 
mediable loss. 

The extraordinary circumstances so characteristic of 
the year 1789 had, it is true, given rise to an extraordi- 
nary man, who, as many have supposed, might have 
staved off the worst features of the French Revolution. 
That man was Mirabeau. He came of a high aristo- 
cratic family ; but both through his genius and his fail- 
ings, he had long unlearned the prejudices and reactionary 



34 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

ideas of the French nobility. His was a temper both 
passionate in sentiment and cool in judgment. His in- 
sight into the political structure of the leading states of 
his time ; his knowledge of the great issues of interna- 
tional policy ; his acquaintance with all the leading men 
of his age, and, more than anything else, his power of 
focussing and generalizing huge clusters of facts, en- 
dowed him with a superiority that nobody could rival in 
his lifetime, and few have equalled after him. In prac- 
tical politics, however, he suffered from a bad private 
reputation, from sordid indebtedness to innumerable 
creditors, and also from debauches that weakened both 
his bodily health and his prestige, so that even his mar- 
vellous oratory and political insight won for him more 
admiration than actual influence. 

To say that Mirabeau might have warded or staved 
off the worst consequences of the French Revolution 
is probably an overstatement. On the other hand, it 
is certain that he alone amongst practical statesmen 
was the first to foresee the stages of the Revolution, 
and its final development into an empire ruled by an 
omnipotent Caesar. Finally, the early and premature 
death of Mirabeau (179 1) deprived France of the man 
who was then her only possible leader, and so the fierce 
powers of the Revolution swept over the country and 
over Europe, without meeting any serious force that 
could control them. 

Calonne, after having convoked the nobility in 1787, 
convinced himself and the King that the dissatisfac- 
tion of the nation, as well as the evils of the state, 
could be remedied only by the convocation of all the 
orders; accordingly in December, 1788, all the three 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — I 35 

orders, the nobility, clergy, and Tiers-Etat (Third 
Estate), or bourgeoisie, were convened, to meet in a 
common assembly for the purpose of healing the wounds 
of the country. From January to April, 1789, the peo- 
ple of France, meeting in innumerable local assemblies, 
drew up their famous cahiers de doleances (lists of griev- 
ances), in which they criticised in the most sincere and 
audacious manner the abuses then prevalent, together 
with the persons then governing France. By an indi- 
rect method of election, over a thousand deputies or 
representatives were sent up to the capital, and thus 
the first genuine Parliament since 16 14 was opened 
on May 5th at Versailles ; the frivolous King decid- 
ing for Versailles on account of the hunting parties in 
which he was there indulging. 

The two superior orders, the nobility and the higher 
clergy, at first refused to join the Tiers-Etat, but the 
determined attitude of Mirabeau and the members of 
the Tiers-Etat in the end prevailed upon the nobility 
and higher clergy, and on June 27th, 1789, the three 
orders met in one and the same room, and constituted 
themselves as the Assemblee Nationale. That famous 
Assemblee has long been called the Assemblee Consti- 
tuante. 

Neither the King nor the Queen, let alone the nu- 
merous members of the Court, was able or even willing 
to see the immense significance of the new assembly. 
The King, a Philistine to the backbone ; the Queen, a 
girlish woman without any notion of politics, neither 
could nor would see that France had entered on an 
entirely new period of her history. It is probably in- 
judicious to blame the royal couple for their short- 



36 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

sightedness, when we consider that one of the broadest 
and deepest minds of the United Kingdom — Edmund 
Burke — was utterly unable to view the events hap- 
pening in France in their right historical perspective. 
A glance at Burke will readily induce us to absolve 
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Burke, far from 
appreciating the immense significance of the French 
Revolution, devoted all his unrivalled power of oratory 
to a wholesale condemnation of that great event. 
Under these circumstances we need not wonder that 
Louis XVI. so utterly misread the spirit of his time 
that, on the nth July, he dismissed the most popular 
of Ministers — Necker — and that on the 14th July 
the French demolished the Bastille, that symbol of 
absolutistic regime. The King was more than ever 
incapable of appreciating an event which threw all 
the liberal minds of Europe, including England, into a 
state of frenzied joy. But what the great philosopher 
of England and the small King of France were unable 
to see, several leading members of the French aristoc- 
racy were only too ready to acknowledge, and on the 
night of August 4th, 1789, the Due de Noailles and 
the Due d'Aiguillon spontaneously proposed a whole- 
sale abolition of all the ancient rights and privileges 
of the nobility. Thus the ancien regime was, under 
the pressure of the spirit of the times, abolished by its 
very devotees. 

In August, September, and October the Assemble 
proceeded to lay down in the most explicit, not to 
say doctrinaire, manner, the general principles gov- 
erning the relation of the individual to the state. All 
the ideas of Rousseau, moderated by the practical 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — I 37 

wisdom of Mirabeau, were applied to build up, on the 
ruins of the ancient state, a commonwealth based on 
the equality of citizens before the law, on the absence 
of all castes, on the absence of religious intolerance, 
and finally on the destruction of those local provin- 
cialisms which had long prevented the French nation 
from blending into one homogeneous mass of equal 
citizens. 

So far (1789- 1 790) the worst enemies of the French 
cannot but admit that the French Revolution had kept 
within bounds, threatening nowise her neighbours or 
the other powers of Europe. The French Government 
had declared, that nothing was more removed from their 
minds than a policy of aggression, more particularly 
towards Prussia and England ; the most explicit assur- 
ances were given that France desired neither the ter- 
ritories on the left bank of the Rhine, nor Belgium. 
However, the great powers were unable to rise to a 
clear and impartial view of the French Revolution, and 
were convinced that France would share the fate of 
Poland, i.e. partition at the hands of her neighbours. 
The great powers, we say, were determined to force a 
war upon France. For, this is the historical fate of 
France, that any great French movement or event will 
inevitably rouse the apprehension, interest, or admira- 
tion of the rest of Europe to a greater extent than 
events happening in any other country. Nor is this 
circumstance difficult to explain. If, on a map of 
Europe, we place one point of the compass in the cen- 
tre of France, say at Bourges, and the other point at 
Edinburgh, and then draw a circle round Bourges, 
we shall find that the greatest enemies and rivals of 



38 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

France are all at equal distances from Bourges — such 
as England, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Madrid. This cen- 
tral position of France rendered any such event as 
the French Revolution of the highest importance to her 
neighbours, and a revolution spreading in what was then 
the centre of Europe could not but affect the other 
great powers in the most direct fashion : and this (in 
addition to the undoubtedly moral and literary con- 
quests that the French and French literature had made 
all over Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries) accounts for the fact that Europe took an 
infinitely greater interest in the French Revolution 
than it had taken in the great Civil War in England 
(1642-165 1), or in the Dutch revolt (1 566-1648). It 
was thus only a matter of expediency when the great 
powers determined to begin their actual invasion of 
France. 

The Declaration of Pillnitz, in August, 1791, was 
only a stage thunder. In the spring of 1792 the Aus- 
trians, and in August, 1792, the Prussians also, in- 
vaded France. The latter campaign is known by the 
name of the " Cannonade of Valmy," where the Prince 
of Brunswick, at the head of a considerable Austro- 
Prussian army, gave a half-hearted battle to the French 
under Dumouriez (in September, 1792), and finding 
himself unable to break the ranks of the French, 
retired into Germany. 

Amongst the spectators present at that campaign 
was Goethe. In the evening, after the cannonade, 
Goethe, on being asked what he thought of the events 
of the day, answered : " Gentlemen, from this place 
and from to-day a new epoch of world-history is be- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — I 39 

gun, and you may say that you have assisted at it." 
(" Hier und heute geht erne neue Epoche der Welt- 
geschichte aus, und ihr konnet sagen, ihr seid dabei 
gewesen.") 



Ill 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. II 

THE first period of the French Revolution, when 
the French people were filled with the highest 
ideals about liberty and community of nations, was 
ended in the month of June, 1791. In that fatal month 
the royal couple took the ill-advised measure of trying 
to escape from their people by a flight to Germany. 
The way the flight was prepared and carried out was 
singularly clumsy, and far from being astonished at the 
capture of the King by the postmaster of Varennes on 
the French frontier, one rather wonders that the King 
had not been discovered soon after leaving Paris. 

He and the Queen were brought back to the capital 
amidst the sullen silence of an indignant nation. It 
now became clear that the animosity of the foreign 
powers was shared by the King, and that the entire 
nation was at the mercy of a European conspiracy. 
There is no nation in Europe that has, in mediaeval 
or modern times, ever found itself in a situation so 
tragic, so exasperating. From all sides of the horizon 
the French people felt the underground and overt at- 
tacks of the rest of Europe. In Sweden and Russia, 
King Gustavus III. and Catherine the Great ; in Austria 
and Prussia, Leopold II. and Frederick Wi]liam II. ; in 
England and in all other countries, threats of invasion, 

40 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — II 4 1 

menaces of the most terrible kind were levelled at the 
people whose King had just given unmistakable proofs 
of treachery and cowardice, which alone are sufficient 
to drive a nation into despair. 

Yet the French people even then, under the most 
trying circumstances, continued to be loyal to the King, 
and instead of making open war on him — as had been 
done in England in 1642, when King Charles I. left 
London — the French people, after a few weeks, in- 
trusted Louis XVI. with the government of the country. 
Even then very few people seriously thought of a repub- 
lic, and Louis XVI. had many a fair chance of consoli- 
dating his shaken position. However, the plans of the 
Powers against France became so manifest ; their inten- 
tion of treating France as they had dealt with Poland 
in the seventies became so evident; the War Party, 
headed by the Girondists and General Dumouriez, be- 
came by the end of 1791 so influential, that a conflict 
between France on the one hand and Europe on the 
other was only a question of days. 

The actions of the Powers, more especially of Prussia 
and Austria, were based on a total misconception of 
the resources and conditions of France. The numerous 
emigres (political refugees) from France had spread the 
belief (still shared by many historians) that the revolu- 
tion in France was in reality only a local anarchy in 
Paris, countenanced in no wise by the bulk of the French 
nation. Moreover, the emigres plausibly remarked that 
owing to the law of 1781 the French nation was, through 
the emigration of the nobles, deprived of their officers 
— officers in the French army since 1781 being aristo- 
crats only. 



42 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

The very atrocity of the situation, however, aroused 
all the latent energy of the French nation, and when 
in September, 1792, the Prussians and Austrians ad- 
vanced on the Rhine, the French, far from being 
cowed and discouraged, were more than ever deter- 
mined to resist the unprovoked hostility of their allied 
enemies. 

One need only read the proclamation, signed if not 
drawn up by the Duke of Brunswick, and dated from 
Coblentz, to understand the heroic resolution of the 
French and their determination to defend their country 
— even at the most painful loss in men and money. 
That proclamation is unique in all history, unless we 
compare it with the actions of Attila, Genghis Khan, or 
some other barbarous " Scourge of heaven." Bruns- 
wick threatened the people of France to raze Paris to 
the ground, and to reduce their country to a desert, 
unless they restored the old monarchy and abandoned 
all the rights of the nation acquired since May, 1789. 

This atrocious document was replied to by the French 
by the so-called September massacres. During five 
days, early in September, numerous individuals, many 
of them innocent or invalids, were massacred in the 
streets, hospitals, and prisons of Paris by the mob mad- 
dened by the terror of the near extinction of France at 
the hands of the allies. 

The horrors of those massacres can certainly not be 
excused ; they are, however, in keeping with the be- 
haviour of most nations in times of unexampled popular 
excitement. 

In the great Civil War in England the popular ex- 
citement vented itself in the wholesale execution of so- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — II 43 

called witches and sorcerers, of whom, as Mr. Lecky 
says, a greater number was cruelly put to death during 
the great Civil War than during all the other periods 
of English history put together. From 1645 to 1647 
over 1 50 witches were executed in the counties of Suf- 
folk and Essex alone. The fascination of cruelty on an 
excited mob is a dark problem ; but at any rate we may 
say that Danton, who did nothing to stop the Septem- 
ber massacres, cannot seriously be held to be the author 
of those misdeeds. With the blind but unerring in- 
stinct of fierce animality, the people of France, who 
had on the 10th August, 1792, practically deposed the 
King, now, in the face of extreme danger, ventured to 
give a practical illustration of their unprecedented reso- 
lution to keep up the unity of France both against home 
and foreign assailants. 

If we condemn the September massacres, we must, 
at any rate, credit them also with a considerable share 
in the great victory of Valmy a few days later. In that 
battle, in itself an insignificant engagement, a new spirit, 
the spirit of a united and determined nation, was proved 
to be stronger than the might of Prussia and Austria. 
The enemy was driven out of the country ; Dumouriez, 
the victor of Valmy, marched northward, and after in- 
flicting upon the Austrians the defeat of Jemmapes, he 
pushed them back on the Rhine, and occupied Belgium 
and parts of Holland (autumn, 1792). The great victo- 
ries won by the army indefinitely increased the prestige 
of the Girondists — amongst whom Vergniaud, Gen- 
son^, Guadet, and Madame Roland were most influen- 
tial — and they quickly brought the King to the block. 
And now at last France, clearly conscious of the exas- 



44 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

perating hostility of Europe, took measures to intensify 
by concentration her powers of resistance, so abundant 
in that old historic country. 

To the student of history the spectacle of France 
resisting single-handed the might of the rest of Europe 
is one which appeals very strongly, both to the heart 
and to the mind. With the exception of the ancient 
Hellenes and the English under Elizabeth, no other 
nation of any magnitude has been given the means to 
go unaided through the grand trial of one nation 
fighting the world for the recovery of her independence 
and liberty. It is this standpoint which must be un- 
waveringly held in view to enable us to do justice to 
the events of 1793 and 1794; events, coloured, stained, 
distorted, and yet glorified by the most ruthless atroci- 
ties, as well as by the most astounding glory of events, 
military and human. That period is well known by the 
name of " La Terreur." It would be superfluous to 
enumerate or to describe the excesses committed by 
the men of the " Convention," or Third Parliament of 
the French Revolution. They are in all books, in 
thousands of novels, in numberless biographies and 
Memoires. 

The names of Marat, Hubert, Robespierre, Camille 
Desmoulins, Fouquier-Tinville, St. Just, and other 
celebrities of "The Terror" are well known to every- 
body. What, however, must be pointed out, and of 
what most students of that period must constantly be 
reminded, is the undeniable connection and correlation 
between those atrocities, on the one hand, and the re- 
generation of France, nay, of Europe, accomplished 
by Frenchmen of that period, on the other. The un- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — II 45 

paralleled deeds and successes of the French generals in 
1 794-1 795- 1 796; the host of social reforms introduced 
during " The Terror " and now all but universally ac- 
cepted, could never have been thought of but for that 
fierce and unparalleled energy of which the home ex- 
cesses of the French were only the dark reverse. 

He who studies " The Terror " in its totality, that is, 
the acts and measures taken by the French Parliament, 
by the Comite de Saint Public (Committee of Public 
Safety), by the leaders of the Paris municipality, cannot 
but arrive at the conclusion that while the Paris muni- 
cipality and its wire-pullers represented the dark side of 
the medal, the Comite' de Salut Public (whether under 
Danton or under Robespierre) represented the terrible 
determination of the French to keep up the unity and 
integrity of their country ; and the " Convention " 
proper, or Parliament, endowed France with institu- 
tions securing order in peace and power in war. The 
Comite' de Salut Public, the most centralized of all 
governments of modern times, really a dictatorship in 
Committee, so efficiently organized the administrative 
and military services of the country, especially through 
its representatives in the provinces, that France was 
enabled to throw huge armies on the frontier, and, 
finally, in the battle of Fleurus, June, 1794, drive out 
the allies again from Belgium and Holland, let alone 
from Alsace. The " Convention," on the other hand, 
introduced the metrical system; reformed all the 
schools for higher education, legalized religious tolera- 
tion, reformed the law, and anticipated in many of its 
measures the reorganization of France as completed by 
Napoleon I. 



46 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Consider the extreme shortness of time in which the 
French carried out legal and social reforms of the most 
comprehensive nature ; compare the few years they 
needed for all these reforms with the generations of 
labor and struggle required by other nations to obtain the 
same result, and we are driven to the conclusion that 
such high-strung and unparalleled national activity was 
possible only at the instigation of a national exaltation, 
the over-exuberance of which was bound to lead to 
abuses. Or, instead of considering things and institu- 
tions, let us for a moment study the leading persons of 
that period. In them we find reflected the same energy, 
and hence the same abuses found in the nation at large. 

The terrific push and dash of Danton, balanced by 
the most enthusiastic and true patriotism, aided by deep 
political insight into home and foreign matters, and glo- 
rified by the greatest rhetorical power of that time, stands 
out in sharp contrast to the vile, venomous, wretched 
ambition of the lawyer of Arras, the cold-blooded, 
villainous Robespierre, whose black soul is rendered 
only more disgusting by his sickly sentimentality. In 
M. Camille Desmoulins and his fierce power as a publi- 
cist and speaker ; in St. Just, with his Draconic severity 
in carrying out matters for the salvation of his country ; 
in so many anonymous heroes for whom death had lost 
its terrors ; in the numerous women, from Charlotte 
Corday, who, a young girl of perfect innocence, found 
the force to murder the fiend Marat ; in Madame Roland ; 
in all the other well-known characters of the French 
Revolution, we note the whole scale of human energy in 
all its shades, reflecting the vast impulse with which 
the French Revolution imbued the French nation. If 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. — II 47 

Europe by her most interested action must be declared 
to have provoked many an excess of the French Revo- 
lution, the glory of having turned the new vital powers 
of the nation to the realization of reforms and to exploits 
of the first order, remains entirely with the French. In 
March, 1795, every foot of the French frontier on land 
and on sea was attacked by all the Powers of Europe. 
Fifteen months later all the land Powers had been 
driven back and beaten by the French, while the might 
of England on sea could boast only one barren victory, 
the battle of the 1st June, 1794, when Howe, although 
disabling the fleet of Villaret de Joyeuse, was unable to 
prevent a large French convoy from the West Indies 
from entering Brest. The decisive victories of the 
French in the summer of 1794 rendered the anarchy at 
home objectless, and the victories of the army "furiously 
conspired " against Robespierre. He and his followers 
suffered death on the Place de la Republique, the fate of 
Danton, Hebert, and so many other " Conventionnels," 
and in 1795 the Directoire was introduced, a government 
which was neither in person nor constitution either im- 
portant or helpful. Very early in 1795 the Republic 
had succeeded in making peace with Prussia, and Spain 
by the Treaty of Basle (1795). The military position of 
France was excellent, and the centre of disturbances came 
more and more to fall outside France. Already in 1 769 
and from that time onward, French, or rather European, 
history begins to spell that name that dominated the 
events of the world until 181 5 — Napoleon ! 



IV 

NAPOLEON. — I 

OF all the characters of modern history Napoleon 
has been most admired and most condemned. 
He is generally credited with having been the greatest 
captain of modern times, one of the greatest statesmen, 
and at the same time one of the most selfish and ruth- 
less characters on record. On the other hand, numerous 
historians, both French and non-French, are almost 
fanatic in their unconditioned admiration of the genius 
as well as of the character of the great emperor. The 
number of documents, books, and essays published on 
the career of the incomparable Corsican is so immense, 
and is increasing so constantly, that we might easily 
indulge in the belief that we are at present fully 
equipped for an equitable and adequate appreciation 
of Napoleon. However, as in the case of the French 
Revolution, we must not for a moment ignore the 
fact that we are as yet not in a position to pass final 
sentence on a man whose personality was deeper and 
more complex than that of Goethe ; whose diplomatic 
activity was more comprehensive than that of Riche- 
lieu, Kaunitz, and Metternich put together; whose 
military exploits covered the whole of Europe and 
parts of Africa and Asia; and whose activity as a 
legislator was so immense that modern France may 

48 



NAPOLEON. — I 49 

truly be said to be the direct offspring of the adminis- 
trative measures and institutions decreed by Napoleon. 

Personality as a rule does not yield to analysis ; 
but when personality becomes one of dimensions so 
vast and of depths so unfathomable as was that of 
the great Emperor of the French, all the resources of 
psychological or ethical analysis fail us. If, moreover, 
one considers the incredible mass of misrepresenta- 
tions spread wholesale all over the Napoleonic litera- 
ture in Europe and America, the pose of so many 
modern historians as judges on a man like Napoleon 
cannot but seem absurd. Every student of history 
knows that nearly three hundred and fifty years after 
the death of Charles V. we are not yet in a position to 
pronounce definitely on the character and historical 
position of that sombre Habsburg. It is absurd to 
think that we are already capable of giving a right 
historical perspective to a ruler of infinite superiority 
to Charles V., and whose death occurred not quite 
three generations ago. Certainly with regard to Na- 
poleon, if in any case of historical study, the student 
must give up the faintest tendency to rash and im- 
modest judgment. The actions and facts made or 
directly inspired by Napoleon are in number so im- 
mense that by picking out some of them one can easily 
believe Napoleon to have been afflicted with the greatest 
or most villainous of vices; just as by selecting other 
facts one can demonstrate him to have been a man of 
the most exalted and sublime character. Like every 
great doer, Napoleon did both good and bad actions, gen- 
erous and mean ones, he was grateful and ungrateful. 

In 1 796-1 797, on the Bridge of Lodi or in the swamps 

E 



50 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

of Arcole, he showed extraordinary physical courage. 
In 1 8 14, after his first abdication, he showed extreme 
physical cowardice. He was an excellent husband, 
yet he brutally divorced his first wife, whom at heart 
he never ceased to love. He was a faithful son and 
brother, yet he treated, at times, the members of his 
family with extreme severity. Nor need we be aston- 
ished at all that. It is the symptom and essence of a 
great personality to harbour in one and the same soul 
the most conflicting qualities, the most contradictory 
tendencies. Napoleon, who can properly be compared 
only to Alexander the Great and Caesar, showed in 
his varied life the same bewildering mass of apparently 
incoherent phenomena that has made a judgment on 
the great king of Macedon and on the founder of the 
Roman Empire a matter of the utmost difficulty. To 
the present day we are still under the influence of 
Caesar, let alone of Napoleon. Broad and comprehen- 
sive facts still bespeak the unique greatness of the two 
men, and to the present day the opinions on Caesar 
differ as widely as do those on Napoleon. 

While it is thus impossible to bracket the character 
and genius of Napoleon into one neat formula of ethi- 
cal judgment, it is, we take it, not quite impossible 
to account for the strange fact that the greatest states- 
man and captain of modern times came from an obscure 
and, in point of European history, quite unimportant 
little island, from Corsica. Twice in modern times we 
may notice this peculiar connection of a political mind 
of the first magnitude with a place of origin quite out of 
proportion to the ultimate result. The builder of the 
mightiest body politic in modern times, the originator of 



NAPOLEON. — I 51 

the most important and in many ways the most impos- 
ing political association of the last four centuries, St. 
Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, came from 
the obscure, poor, and insignificant country of the 
Basques. The man whose powerful mind has framed, 
animated, and organized the " Society of Jesus" was a 
Basque. In the case of Napoleon, however, we can do 
more than merely state the interesting fact that the first 
Emperor of the French in modern times came from 
Corsica. 

The Corsicans, although their history has generally 
been ignored, were in reality one of the most remark- 
able nations in the Mediterranean. Unlike the people 
of the island of Sardinia who have at no time in history 
played an important role, the Corsicans had been wag- 
ing a secular war against the mighty republic of Genoa, 
and forty years before the birth of Napoleon the Corsi- 
cans fought that war of national resistance not only 
against the Genoese but frequently against mighty 
French armies too. So great was their military capacity 
and genius that they repeatedly defeated both the 
French and Genoese armies ; it was only at the end of 
forty years' uninterrupted fighting that the French were 
enabled to take possession of the island to some extent. 
During these great national fights, Arrigo de la Rocca, 
the Paolis, and numerous other Corsicans showed the 
greatest genius for military and political work, and Na- 
poleon Bonaparte may be said to be only the climax of 
a long series of heroes who, trained in the most unequal 
war, had naturally acquired gifts of perspicacity such as 
at that time no other European nation had the oppor- 
tunity of developing. At any rate, we cannot, in an 



52 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

estimate of Napoleon's military genius, omit the fact 
that he lived in one of those border countries attacked 
by neighbouring and mighty empires in which at times 
the constant habit of fighting against great odds has 
brought to light the Themistocles, the Robert Bruces, 
the Shamyls, etc., and Napoleon. 

However, to point out only the Corsican antecedents 
of Napoleon would be manifestly unfair to the connec- 
tion of Napoleon with France proper. It cannot be 
denied that Napoleon was the embodiment and final 
culminating development of the French Revolution. 
That that great event would ultimately lead to some 
towering personality was, long before the advent of 
Napoleon, the common belief of most Frenchmen, and 
of most thinking persons outside France. Napoleon 
himself, at St. Helena, repeatedly expressed his convic- 
tion that had he not been the Emperor of the French, 
somebody else would have played his role. The French, 
after trying every possible party, could not but see that 
the salvation of the country was neither in the moderates 
nor in the radicals ; neither in the return to the laws of 
the ancien regime, nor in the maintenance of an abso- 
lutely democratic republic. Under these circumstances 
it was evident that only one powerful will and mind was 
able to steer France through the maze of wars and 
policies that had ever since 1795 completely changed 
and displaced the old political life of Europe. It is, 
moreover, a usual phenomenon in history that vast and 
deeply agitated movements, whether of a political or a 
mental character, are terminated by the appearance of a 
personality which combines their various elements and 
thus controls them. Thus arose the great founders of 



NAPOLEON. — I 53 

religions at the end of long, sometimes secular religious 
revolutions ; so came Henry IV. to France, Cromwell to 
England, Bismarck to Germany. 

The relation of these great personalities to their time 
is that of the blossom to the leaf and stem. They can 
neither be said to have created their time, nor to be 
nothing but the creation thereof — they are both. Napo- 
leon is unthinkable without the French Revolution, and 
the French Revolution without Napoleon would repre- 
sent only wild and bootless anarchy. The French Revo- 
lution and Napoleon form the most important event in 
modern history. 

In person this extraordinary man was small, well-knit, 
with classical features, of robust health, and most tem- 
perate in his habits. He ate very little and drank less ; 
his usual beverage being a little Sauterne. In youth 
he was very thin and pale; after his thirty-eighth 
year he became rather bloated and heavy. He required 
little sleep and took it at odd times during the day or the 
night. His power of work was immense ; he frequently 
tired out a number of secretaries without in the least 
feeling fatigued himself, and could turn from one sub- 
ject to another without the least effort. He used to say 
that all the subjects and persons interesting him were 
put away into so many " drawers," and when he wanted 
subject "A," he only pulled out its respective "drawer." 
His love and sense of detail were just as remarkable as 
his power of grasping great dominating traits covering 
an immense array of details. He delighted in reading 
military reports of the minutest kind, and his memory 
had stored away all the numberless details of his armies, 
his ships, his fortresses and his officials, of all of which 



54 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

he had the most accurate and ready knowledge. He 
frequently corrected reports, sent to him by his govern- 
ors or agents, about far-off provinces from memory with- 
out consulting any reference book or minutes. In fact, 
it is quite correct to say that his mind was essentially 
"topographical," that is, on his mind was impressed a 
huge map of Europe in which every physical feature, 
such as mountains, rivers, lakes, brooks, ravines, passes, 
gorges, were carefully entered together with all the 
political and social information of each country. For 
great as his genius was, his successes were undoubtedly 
due to superior information in the first place. 

Like Richelieu, who through his agents was the 
best informed man in France about the actual state of 
his country, so Napoleon, trusting nobody, invariably 
had the most accurate personal information about the 
country he was going to contend with ; and although 
he mostly fought in countries of which very detailed 
maps had long been made, yet he constantly demanded 
fresh and better maps. He despatched his best-trained 
officers to survey anew even such a well-known country 
as Bavaria, and he was constantly studying all the 
maps he could secure. In addition to that he had the 
real " objective " temper which enables the man of 
genius to see things not in the light of his desire or 
personal "bias," but in their own light. 

Nobody was more just to the capacity or resources 
of his enemies, or less conceited with regard to his 
own genius than Napoleon. As a rule he neither over- 
rated nor underrated his enemies. His strategical 
classical victory at Ulm in 1805 was due mainly to his 
correct appreciation of the Austrian general, Mack, 



NAPOLEON. — I 55 

who was then generally held to be a strategist of the 
first order, whom Napoleon, however, rightly judged 
to be a muddle-headed dilettante. 

On the other hand, Napoleon fully appreciated the 
gifts of Archduke Charles, his great opponent. And as 
with individuals, so with nations; whatever judgment 
he passed in public for political purposes (such as the 
famous words spoken of the English that they were 
" tine nation de bontiqniers" — a nation of shopkeepers), 
in his correspondence with his friends and officials we 
note that he had a very just appreciation of the great 
qualities of the English, and even of those of the Por- 
tuguese and Spanish. His successes, therefore, were 
based on the best attainable information and on inces- 
sant work ; we need, therefore, not be astounded that 
his unprecedented military victories have always been 
considered to f ollowjrather from a systematic strategy — 
or, as he used to say, des regies de Vart (" the rules of 
the art") — than from mere luck or fortunate incident. 

There is now little doubt that Napoleon was the 
greatest strategist of modern times. The word strategy, 
although in constant use in newspapers and in common 
conversation, is rarely grasped in its technical and true 
meaning. It may be reduced to a very simple expres- 
sion, in fact, to a single word. Strategy really means 
a line: the line of operations — that is, the direction 
which leads a general, if he is victorious, to a decisive 
victory, to a victory that forces his opponent to sur- 
render. In campaigns it is not sufficient to win battles. 
There has scarcely ever been a general of any note 
who has not won a greater or smaller number of en- 
gagements. What makes a general is not the number 



56 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

of his tactical victories, nor the number of persons and 
arms taken. It is only the rapidity of decisive actions 
that constitutes a great general. Military leaders who 
make their points only after wearisome fighting for 
years and years, entailing enormous loss of men and 
treasure, may, indeed, be called good generals, but 
they are certainly not great strategists. In the Thirty 
Years' War, for instance, although the number of clever 
and efficient generals on both sides was very great, 
there was only one great general — Gustavus Adolphus ; 
for he alone knew where and when to give battle, and 
he alone arrived rapidly at a decisive and final success. 
To make this point absolutely clear we have only to 
compare the campaign of Napoleon in 1805, on the 
Upper Danube, with the campaign of Marlborough and 
Prince Eugene in the same region almost exactly one 
hundred years before, in 1704. 

The military problem that both Marlborough and 
Napoleon had to solve was practically identical. For 
Marlborough's and Eugene's main point was to separate 
the French general, Tallard, from his German ally, 
the Bavarian elector, Max Emmanuel; in other words, 
to prevent the junction of the French and Bavarian 
armies. In Napoleon's case the problem was to pre- 
vent the junction of the Austrian general, Mack, at 
and around Ulm, with his ally, the Russian general, 
Kutusow. Marlborough and Eugene were unable to 
prevent the junction of their opponents, and were 
therefore forced to fight a formidable battle, the battle 
of Blenheim, entailing severe loss on both of them. 
Napoleon, on the other hand, so arranged the marches 
of the various columns, and so successfully duped Mack 



NAPOLEON. — I 57 

as to the real route of the French army, that Mack's 
army, with slight exceptions, was forced to surrender 
to Napoleon after a few unimportant engagements. 
These remarks are made from a purely technical 
standpoint; for, historically, every one knows that 
Marlborough was in a considerably less advantageous 
position than was the Emperor, owing to his (Marl- 
borough's) being hampered by the Dutch and the 
German princes. It is for this reason that Napo- 
leon's campaigns to the present day are constantly 
being studied in all the military schools, whereas even 
in Prussia or Germany the campaigns of Frederick, 
with few exceptions, are never made the subject of 
elaborate study in military schools. 

The campaigns of Napoleon are, indeed, typical 
and classical campaigns ; they are dominated by a 
leading and general strategic idea arising from a com- 
plete knowledge of the country. Thus in 1796 we see 
Napoleon enter Italy from the south on the so-called 
Cornicke, or the route from Savona to Genoa, and in 
1800 again we see him enter Italy by the Lake of 
Geneva and the Little St. Bernard. 

His dominating idea was to place himself between 
the enemy and the enemy's communications. In addi- 
tion to that, he invariably sacrificed minor points to 
the essential points. Even in 1809, when he was again 
forced to fight Austria in the valley of the Danube, 
he intentionally ignored the preparing Walcheren ex- 
pedition, that is to say, the forty thousand English 
soldiers sent to fall upon his flank in Belgium, for he 
correctly estimated that if he succeeded in defeating 
Austria, the English would be in the air without his 



58 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

striking at them at all. If, on the other hand, he was 
unsuccessful with Austria, his prestige and his mili- 
tary position would be completely ruined. It is well 
known that Napoleon constantly taught the system of 
concentration, the system so powerfully imitated by 
the German generals in the Franco-Prussian War, and 
a system constantly sinned against in our own times 
for non-military considerations. Napoleon, who was 
both ruler and general, had the advantage of not per- 
mitting political considerations to warp his military 
judgment. That strategy was the most important 
feature of Napoleon's military genius is evident from 
the fact that he neither stimulated the invention of new 
arms, nor favoured the adoption of any new mechanical 
invention. The rifle of his soldiers was still the old 
rifle of Louis XVI., and so was the cannon. Fulton's 
immortal invention — first offered to Napoleon — found 
no favour with the Emperor. Napoleon clearly saw 
its possible value ; but, as we now know, Fulton's 
steamship was then very primitive. Another still more 
striking proof is that Napoleon invariably held it to 
be his duty to arrive on the battlefield with more 
soldiers than his enemy. In fact, while he thought, 
and in his military correspondence incessantly repeats, 
that a campaign ought if reasonably prepared ("in 
accordance with the rules of the art ") never to be 
lost, he just as frequently insists on the precarious 
nature of a battle. Battles, he says, very frequently 
depend on some incident or misunderstanding, on par- 
ticular events that nobody can foresee. It is therefore 
safer, he adds, to trust to numbers. Yet he himself re- 
peatedly beat his adversaries when he was in numerical 



NAPOLEON.— I 59 

inferiority — especially at Austerlitz in 1805, and at 
Dresden in 18 13. As to the question whether Napo- 
leon's luck must not be considered as a considerable 
element of his success, it can certainly not be denied 
that like all great captains his was an astounding luck. 
Yet we cannot but admit, especially after a study of 
his correspondence, that until 18 10, that is, so long as 
he did not overrate himself, and had still contrived to 
stave off the European coalition against himself, Napo- 
leon's wonderful success was chiefly based on the won- 
derful care and genius with which he prepared it. 
Neither England nor any other country possessed a 
statesman or general equal to him. Pitt's greatness 
was in home matters, and he died in January, 1806. 
The Austrian statesmen were great neither at home 
nor abroad, and Prussia was governed by a beautiful, 
but politically insignificant queen, and a senseless, 
heavy king. The throne of Spain was disgraced by 
the most wretched of her numerous royal failures, 
and on the throne of Russia was a Czar who joined to 
the vanity of a fop, the cunning of a Tartar and the 
sentimentality of a false mystic. He was in no wise 
a match for Napoleon's statecraft or military genius. 
The stories according to which Alexander I. of Russia, 
or later on Prince Metternich, the Austrian statesman, 
duped Napoleon, are on a level with the well-known 
legend that Bliicher, as the Prussians say, or the Duke 
of Wellington, as the English say, brought about the 
downfall of Napoleon. 

Napoleon was duped and defeated by one man 
only : by himself. After 18 10 he completely overrated 
himself, and persistently deceiving himself about the 



60 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

nature of tasks, the impossibility of which he was the 
first to point out (such as the Peninsular War and the 
Russian War), he finally roused the whole of Europe 
into a coalition : that is, he contrived to create a 
European union such as has never been known in 
the whole of history, not in the time of Charles V., 
nor of Louis XIV. ; and the end was — St. Helena. 

In 1796 Napoleon married Josephine Beauharnais, a 
frivolous but exceedingly charming widow of thirty- 
three, who cared nothing for Napoleon, and probably 
never could understand him, but who was loved by 
the young general with the most passionate devotion, 
and had to her very end, in 18 14, the most remark- 
able power over him. 

Barras, one of the Directors, and a former lover of 
Josephine, procured Napoleon the position of general- 
in-chief of the Italian army, and so began the ever 
memorable campaign of 1796. That campaign was 
only one of four attacks which the French in 1796 
were planning against the English on the one hand, 
and against the House of Habsburg on the other. 

The attack on England was to be by sea, vid Ire- 
land ; the attack on Austria was to be carried out by 
two considerable armies, one under Jourdan, in the 
valley of the Main, the other by Moreau, in the valley 
of the Danube. Finally, Napoleon with a small army 
of from 30,000 to 40,000 men was to make what was 
then considered a diversion in Lombardy, where 
Austria still had the Milanese and other Italian 
dominions. Napoleon's campaign was at the begin- 
ning considered to be the least important of the great 
attacks planned by Carnot. In fact, the Directors con- 



NAPOLEON. — I 6 1 

sented to the Italian campaign mainly in hopes of 
seizing the rich towns of Lombardy, of extorting 
money and works of art, and other treasures. As a 
matter of fact, however, all their attacks on England 
by sea in 1796- 1797, as well as the campaigns of Jour- 
dan and Moreau, quickly turned out to be failures ; 
so that the whole weight of the French attack on the 
Habsburgs came to rest on the shoulders of the young 
hero in Italy. He alone of all the generals sent by 
Carnot against England and Austria was completely 
successful. In less than a month he conquered the 
western half of Lombardy, and in a few more months 
the other half and the whole of central Italy, and in 
less than a year after crossing the Austrian Alps in 
Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria, he stood a few miles 
from terror-stricken Vienna. 

From his battles beginning in April, 1796, at Monte- 
notte, Dego, Mondovi, when he successfully separated 
Beaulieu, the Austrian general, from Colli, the Sar- 
dinian commander, to his great battles for the reduction 
of the so-called "quadrilateral" {i.e. the fortresses of 
Peschiera, Verona, Legnago, and Mantua, all south of 
Lake Garda), he and some of his generals, especially 
Augier and Massena, invariably practised the true prin- 
ciples of the " rules of the art," that is, concentration 
and placing one's self on the enemy's connections; so that 
the victories of Lonato and Castiglione, of Arcole and 
Rivoli, not only defeated the Austrian armies under 
Wurmser and Alvinczy respectively, but also secured 
for Napoleon the possession of the best, most formidable, 
and yet unconquered of the four fortresses, i.e. Mantua. 
In February, 1797, Napoleon's rapid march on the 



62 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Pope's little army as far as Tolentino, where the Pope 
made peace with the French, and his equally rapid 
march across the Austrian Alps to Leoben, were only in 
the nature of appendices to his great campaign in Lom- 
bardy. Nobody appreciated this campaign more pro- 
foundly than did Napoleon himself. He knew that he 
had not only won a series of brilliant battles, and revealed 
the remarkable gifts of his generals, but he himself stood 
fully revealed to his own mind. What none of his con- 
temporaries as yet saw, he alone grasped with absolute 
clearness, to wit, that his was the role of the final saviour 
of France ; that his was to be the career of the modern 
Cromwell. He felt the value of each card he held, and 
mapping out his life carefully, he hastened to make 
peace with the Austrians at Campo Formio, with a 
view of returning to Paris at the earliest possible op- 
portunity to occupy the position he was already deter- 
mined to obtain. This accounts for the surprisingly 
lenient conditions he granted to the Austrians at Campo 
Formio. Austria obtained the territory of the Venetian 
Republic, including Dalmatia, and thus for the first time 
in her history she obtained a direct outlet on the Adri- 
atic, having had a maritime outlet so far only in Belgium, 
at that time the " Austrian Netherlands." Napoleon 
was prompted in his attitude also, by the motive of 
making Austria appear as a traitor to Germany. 
France obtained all the territory west of the Rhine, and 
the first act of the great Napoleonic drama was finished 
in scenes of unparalleled glorification, when Napoleon 
on returning to Paris was made the subject of an apo- 
theosis by his enraptured fellow-citizens. 



NAPOLEON. — II 

THE great victories of Napoleon acquired for him 
both the unbounded admiration of his people and 
the jealousy of the Directors. The latter motive was 
probably the strongest in the formation of the strange 
plan, in which Napoleon was to destroy British power 
through an invasion of Egypt and Syria. That the 
" Gift of the Nile," the country of the ancient Pharaohs, 
was, and is, in many ways the centre of the political 
and commercial world, had long been acknowledged 
and seen. In the seventies of the seventeenth century 
the great philosopher Leibniz went to Paris to propose 
to Louis XIV. that the King of France should conquer 
Egypt instead of wasting his power in bootless inva- 
sions of Germany. Leibniz in a memoir well known to 
Napoleon expatiated, with the foresight of a great 
thinker, on the immense advantages accruing to France 
from the possession of Egypt, where, as he remarked, 
the two diagonals drawn through the three continents 
of Asia, Africa, and Europe intersect in their centre. 
Napoleon, for strategical and political reasons, was of 
the same opinion. It cannot, however, be denied, that 
into his Asiatic plans there entered largely a mystic 
element. He himself tells us that when he trod on 
the historic soil of Egypt and Syria, where Sesostris, 
Alexander the Great, Caesar, the great French crusad- 

63 



64 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

ers, and so many other heroes, had been doing great 
deeds, he felt himself in a sort of hypnotic state. Vi- 
sions of things to come centuries after his death, yet 
possibly to be realized by him, were constantly flitting 
before his enchanted mind. So true is the old experi- 
ence that men reprehend in others no fault with greater 
acrimony than the very defect from which they are suf- 
fering themselves. Napoleon constantly sneered at 
what he called " idealogists," and he himself was the 
most remarkable specimen of that class of men of action 
hypnotized by a vague ideal. 

However that may be, Napoleon started for Egypt, 
called at Malta, which he occupied, avoided Nelson and 
his fleet, who were chasing him all over the Mediter- 
ranean, and entered Egypt in July, 1798. Nelson 
finally did meet the French fleet on August 1st, 1798, 
and signally defeated it in the great battle of Aboukir 
Bay. That did not interfere with Napoleon's plans. 
After a rapid campaign, by which he secured both the 
eastern side of Egypt, from Suez to the town of Kossir 
on the Red Sea, the complete delta of the Nile, and the 
Nile beyond Thebes (the latter by the ingenious and 
successful campaign conducted by Desaix), he at once 
commenced organizing the country. As he profoundly 
remarked, Egypt, depending, as it does, entirely on the 
artificially regulated inundations of the Nile, is a 
country in which the Civil Service or centralized ad- 
ministration is of the utmost importance, and hence 
republican or decentralized institutions are unpractical. 
To complete his success in Egypt he entered Syria 
along the coast of ancient Phoenicia ; he failed before 
Acre, defended by Sir W. Sidney Smith and Phelip- 



NAPOLEON. — II 65 

peaux, a French imigre\ but beat the Turks on Mount 
Tabor. An outbreak of pestilence, however, forced 
him to come back to Egypt, and learning about the 
anarchical state in France, where the Directors had 
completely failed to keep the various contending parties 
in order, Napoleon resolved to return to Paris and to 
abandon his Egyptian plan. 

In the year 1799 the French armies had at first been 
exceedingly unfortunate; the Powers, especially Eng- 
land, Russia, and Austria, hoping to be able to cope 
with the French in the absence of their best general, 
invaded French territory, both in the north, where an 
Anglo-Russian army entered Holland, but was com- 
pletely defeated by Brune at Bergen, not far from 
Alkmaar; in the centre, under Archduke Charles in 
Switzerland, where Massena was at the head of the 
French armies ; finally in Italy, where an Austro-Russian 
army under Suwarow was advancing through Lombardy, 
winning a series of victories over several French gen- 
erals. The state of France, then, in summer, 1799, was 
exceedingly precarious. Had Suwarow been able to 
join the Archduke in Switzerland, the allies might have 
entered France proper and undone all the work of the 
previous campaigns. But Massena beat, in the terrible 
battle of Zurich, the Austro-Russian army in Switzer- 
land, and Suwarow, who had with brutal disregard for 
human life crossed the St. Gothard in order to join his 
allies in Switzerland, learning the result of Zurich, 
suddenly changed his mind and abandoned Switzerland 
altogether to the French. However, Lombardy re- 
mained lost to the French, and Melas (of Austria) was 
in actual possession not only of the west of Lombardy, 



66 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

but was also trying to invade southeastern France. The 
danger, therefore, largely averted by the victories of 
Brune and Massena, was not yet totally removed. 

Under these circumstances Lucien, the brother of 
Napoleon, and President of the Lower House of Repre- 
sentatives, made up his mind to put his brother into 
power. It is well known how the victor of so many 
battles on the day when Lucien's conspiracy was actu- 
ally carried out (18th of Brumaire) lost all presence of 
mind, repeatedly fainted and could scarcely recover, 
even when he learnt that his own soldiers by tyrannizing 
Parliament had made him practically the head of the 
State. The reader will remember a remark made in 
the previous lecture, that in natures like that of Napo- 
leon, which are both excessively self-conscious and abso- 
lutely nai've, the ordinary physiological manifestations 
of emotions, such as trembling, fainting, crying, sobbing, 
are the regular accompaniments of the actions of a mind 
which otherwise seems to be devoid of any human frailty. 
Thus Napoleon cried like a child when one of the Vene- 
tian senators implored him not to abolish the old Re- 
public, and he trembled like a child on the day when he 
was made First Consul. Once in power, he immediately 
recommenced the campaign in Italy, to recover all the 
territories which he had secured by his victories in 1796 
and 1797. The campaign of Marengo in 1800 was, as far 
as Napoleon was concerned, a strategical victory, if, tacti- 
cally speaking, not a glorious achievement. It is well 
known that in the battle of Marengo, near Alessandria, 
the French army, technically beaten by the Austrians 
under Melas, was saved by the sudden appearance of 
Desaix, who had been sent by Napoleon in a wrong 



NAPOLEON. — II 67 

direction southward towards Genoa, but who, on hearing 
the thunder of the cannon, at once took in the new situa- 
tion, and unlike Grouchy in the identical position in the 
campaign of Waterloo, came up in time to renew the bat- 
tle of Marengo, which he won, but in which he was killed. 

Tactically, the result of Marengo is, therefore, due to 
Desaix, as the tactical failure of Waterloo is due to 
Grouchy. Strategically, however, Napoleon, by having 
placed himself on the communications of Melas, had 
won the battle before he had fought it. The result was 
the recovery of Lombardy by the French; and since 
Moreau in a campaign in Bavaria succeeded in com- 
pletely defeating the Austrians at Hohenlinden a few 
months after Marengo, the Austrians were again forced 
to sue for peace, which was made in 1801 at Luneville. 
From 1800 to 1803, then, Napoleon was not only at the 
head of the French State, but by his decisive victories 
had acquired for France such an absolute ascendency 
over all the other powers of the Continent, that in his 
antechamber one could meet all the princes of Ger- 
many asking for favours which he alone was able to 
give, although legally all those princes were under the 
power of the Holy Roman Empire. 

Talleyrand, his great Foreign Minister, who took 
bribes and promises from all the parties, arranged for a 
recasting of the map of Germany, and already, in 1803, 
the first of the two great processes by which the 
checkered area of Germany was reduced to simpler 
aspects was inaugurated. That first process was the 
secularizing of the vast territories owned by sovereign 
Roman Catholic dignitaries, that is, bishops, arch- 
bishops, priors, etc. The second process, which oc- 



68 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

curred in 1805 and 1806, was the mediatization of a 
great number of small sovereign territories in the 
power of imperial knights, counts, and other smaller 
sovereigns. Both processes were formulated and exe- 
cuted at the hands of Napoleon and his agents. It 
is incontestable that just as Napoleon was the first to 
unite almost the whole of Italy (i.e. Italian republics, 
principalities, kingdoms, and other small territories of 
still smaller sovereigns), even so it was Napoleon who 
rendered Bismarck's final triumph possible. When Na- 
poleon first fought his Italian campaign, Germany 
consisted of nearly 1000 petty principalities. When Na- 
poleon was sent to St. Helena, little over forty principali- 
ties, kingdoms, etc., made up the whole of Germany. 
His historic vocation, in which he so fully believed, 
showed, therefore, with the utmost clearness, both in 
Italy and in Germany, and from that standpoint it is 
to be regretted that the Spaniards conceived such an 
unconquerable hatred against the man who alone of all 
the rulers and statesmen would have been able to elec- 
trify their dormant powers, and to give them a chance 
of (recovering their ancient greatness. 

If now we look at France, the great vocation of Na- 
poleon, the abiding and immense work that he has done 
for the French, becomes evident in every department 
of French public or private life. In fact, Napoleon is 
the creator of modern France, of her centralized insti- 
tutions. Foreshadowed, anticipated, no doubt, by the 
work of the Convention, it was fully articulated and 
legalized by the powerful organizing mind of the in- 
comparable Corsican. 

Napoleon placed the whole of the education of French- 



NAPOLEON. — II 69 

men on the basis on which it has been proceeding to 
the present day. The college and university teaching, 
the division of scientific labour in the various high 
schools for technical and scholarly researches, were 
all organized by him. He created and organized the 
Banque de France; he established the Legion d'Hon- 
neur ; chiefly he codified the laws of France, which had 
hitherto consisted of an ungovernable mass of usages 
and royal ordinances defying all system and forming an 
encumbrance in every part of practical life. It would 
be the greatest possible mistake to assume that Napo- 
leon's participation in that great work, in his Code Civil, 
Code Criminely etc., was only one of the kind in which 
the Emperor Justinian or Frederick the Great partici- 
pated in the making of the codes bearing their names. 
Napoleon assisted at nearly every meeting of the legis- 
lators and codifiers, and whole sections of his codes 
bear the direct impress of his mighty personality, of 
his deep insight into the realities of life. With charac- 
teristic sagacity he used to remark to M. Tronchet and 
the other jurists who aided him : " You know only the 
theoretic law, I know real life. I have fed and cared 
for thousands of men. I know not Man and Woman in 
the abstract, I know them in the concrete. I know the 
young and the old, the healthy and the ill, the widow 
and the married woman. I know the lawyer and the 
doctor, the clergyman and the artisan, and I mean to 
give to my nation a law that shall in its every part bear 
the impress of realities." Nothing can be truer. Al- 
though Napoleon was deprived of all power in June, 
181 5, yet for nearly a century, i.e. until the recent 
(1900) promulgation of the new code of civil law in 



yo FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Germany, a great number of German countries, such 
as Baden and the Rhenish provinces, long freed from 
the rule of Napoleon, preferred to keep his code as 
the embodiment of common sense and justice ; and 
one may fairly say that of white nations the majority 
have either completely accepted the code of Napoleon 
or have taken the chief inspiration and guiding prin- 
ciples from the study of that masterpiece of fairness 
and real insight into human relations. 

It cannot be denied that Napoleon took a somewhat 
mechanical view of humanity, and in his attempt to reg- 
ulate and formularize all the relations of the countries 
under his rule, he appears sometimes to have over- 
stepped the limit of moderation. Yet as a matter of fact, 
France has, in spite of a frequent change of her regime, 
kept all the Napoleonic institutions — his regulation of 
the Church to the State, his system of education, his 
method of dealing with the great task of civil adminis- 
tration, his conception of the colonial system ; and what 
is still stranger, most of the Continental states have con- 
formed to the French model, so that with slight differ- 
ences in local and minor matters, the political machine 
made by Napoleon is now the political machine of 
nearly every Continental country. This immense and 
lasting work of Napoleon is frequently lost sight of. 
Nor need we wonder at that. People, as a rule, study 
history for its dramatic effects, and so they prefer to 
linger over the dramatic scenes of Austerlitz or the 
terrible defeats of Napoleon at Leipsic and at Waterloo, 
rather than study the great reforms, the new political 
life, which he introduced. True, Napoleon was greatest 
probably as a military leader ; however, one cannot for- 



NAPOLEON. — II /I 

get that his ideas as to the regulation of modern states 
have long proved to be, on the whole, the only possible 
political system, so that the theories of the great Ency- 
clopaedists and other thinkers on practical politics have 
more or less given way to the ideas introduced by the 
greatest captain of modern times. 

The prosperity of France from 1800 to 18 12 was un- 
exampled. Napoleon, who in 1802 had been made Con- 
sul for life, and in 1804, with practical unanimity, 
Emperor of the French, hated to levy too heavy taxes 
upon his people, and so procured money either by new 
wars, or, as in the case of Louisiana, by the sale of huge 
colonies. The industrial and commercial opportunities 
of the French were infinitely increased by Napoleon's 
commercial hostility to England, and the French ac- 
tually hoped from 1800 to 1805 that their position as the 
leading nation of the world would forever be placed on an 
unshakable basis, considering that they had just emerged 
from the most terrible revolution of all times, not only 
unscathed, not only as the victors over all their enemies, 
but also as the prudent organizers of their conquests and 
the subject of great sympathy on the part of most of their 
conquered enemies. The French mind, very much in 
contradiction to what in England and America it is held 
to be, is in reality most sober, matter-of-fact, and moderate. 
The French are not in the least as nervous as are the 
Americans, and, as a rule, less given to sudden changes 
than even the English. This may appear paradoxical to the 
student of phenomena in French life which the French 
themselves do not take seriously, such as the dealings or 
transactions in their parliaments or in their bestowal of 
popularity on a man whom nobody really takes seriouslyc 



72 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

But at the bottom of the French soul there is a fund of 
prudent moderation such as is natural in persons with 
whom habits of the most rigorous thrift, and the most 
untiring energy and love of labour, are the most usual 
and most carefully thought-out feature. These remarks 
are necessary to explain how the French as a nation 
were, in 1805, not at all enchanted or over-enthusiastic 
about the great victories of Napoleon. It was the gen- 
eral opinion of the French that any new conquests 
outside France, which had then reached its natural 
boundaries, were superfluous, and it is a fact that even the 
astounding and marvellous victory of Austerlitz on the 
2d December, 1805, over Russia and Austria — a victory 
which for years to come completely nullified the great- 
est naval victory of modern times, Trafalgar (21st Octo- 
ber, 1805) — was received in Paris with relative coldness. 
Both the common people and men of the shrewdness of 
Talleyrand, nay, Josephine herself, could not help re- 
marking that even this splendid victory could scarcely 
lead to any new and valuable results except to compli- 
cations, giving no doubt new opportunities for startling 
victories, but no guarantees of that peace and glory 
which the French rightly thought they had forever se- 
cured, when in 1802 even England had considered it 
necessary to conclude peace with France at Amiens. 
This discrepancy between the feelings and wishes of the 
French nation and the policy of the Emperor is the 
most ominous phenomenon in his career. For while, on 
the one hand, it is certain that Napoleon was brought to 
fall through his own abuse of his genius, yet on the 
other hand, one cannot help noticing that had the 
French warmly and sincerely clung to Napoleon, even 



NAPOLEON. — II 73 

in the time of his disasters from 1812 to 181 5, as they 
had done one hundred years before to King Louis XIV. 
during the terrible years of 1 706-1 711, Napoleon might, 
with relative facility, have overcome even the grandest 
of coalitions against him, that of 18 14. It is custom- 
ary in Germany to speak of Napoleon's downfall as be- 
ing due to Blucher, Billow, Gneisenau, and other Prussian 
leaders ; in England, again, few, if any, ever seriously 
doubt that the Iron Duke brought Napoleon to his fall ; 
while in Spain every honest patriot is convinced that 
Palafox, Castanos, and other great Spanish heroes were 
the ruin of the Emperor ; let alone Russian generals and 
popular heroes, to whose deeds alone, every Russian 
holds, Napoleon's ruin must be traced. In reality, how- 
ever, one nation alone, the French, has the doubtful 
glory of having brought to his knees the greatest of 
their captains and their statesmen, the greatest of mod- 
ern men. Had they clung to him as they ought to have 
done, they would have spared themselves the terrible 
disasters which have befallen them ever since. Truly, 
it is no exaggeration to say that a nation which, twenty- 
seven years after the death of Napoleon the Great, was 
content to accept his nephew, a weak, mediocre, and 
dreamy personage, and acknowledge him for over 
twenty-two years as their ruler, ought in common sense 
to have done everything to retain the great Napoleon at 
all costs as the only man who could promise and guaran- 
tee them power, honour, and glory. 

Twice in their history the French dealt by their 
greatest character and their greatest glory in the most 
inexcusable and unpardonable fashion. Jeanne d'Arc, 
who through her unique and incomparable personality 



74 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

roused France from the most ignominious lethargy, 
and in a few months rid a large portion of Central 
France from the foreigner who had held the French 
nation in subjection or terror for nearly fifteen years : 
Jeanne d'Arc was made a prisoner through one of the 
incidents of feudal warfare, and fell into the hands of 
the English, who put her in a dungeon at Rouen (1430). 
Jeanne d'Arc could have easily been liberated and again 
placed at the head of the French nation, which under 
her inspiring and ingenious leadership, considering the 
demoralization of the English and the vacillating policy 
of the Burgundian allies, would have undoubtedly re- 
duced the rest of the great conflict called the Hundred 
Years' War, or the period from 1430 to 1453, to an 
affair of a few months, or in the worst case, of a year. 
The atrocious behaviour of French bishops and clergy- 
men to the greatest of French women, who has long 
been canonized by the public opinion of Europe, if not 
yet by the opinion of the Roman Curia, cost France 
twenty-two more horrible years of warfare in Nor- 
mandy, Brittany, Poitou, and Guienne, thousands of 
lives, millions of treasure, and the general devastation 
of the country. 

It is no exaggeration to hold that the ingratitude and 
indifference of the French to their greatest character 
in modern times entailed upon them the same terrible 
consequences that followed in the wake of their un- 
speakably shameful neglect of the Saint of Domremy. 
Like every nation, the French tried to disguise their 
own fault by exaggerating the power of the English 
and other allies, just as the Americans, as we have seen 
in the first lecture, overdo the merits of Lafayette in 



NAPOLEON. — II 75 

order to save their own self-conceit. It remains, alar 
but too true that Napoleon's downfall was owing in the 
first place to his own faults ; but of nations who con- 
tributed to his downfall the French are the guiltiest. 
At present, nearly a century after Waterloo, the sense 
of that historic ingratitude is slowly coming over the 
French nation, and for the last ten years there has been 
an astounding revival of interest in Napoleon and his 
time. The French do not seem ever to get enough 
books and articles about the great conqueror, and every 
new book promising some new revelation, even of de- 
tails or minor points, is received and read with avidity. 
It is said that when Louis Philippe, in February, 1848, 
wanted to accede as a last resort to the demands of 
the people, he was told the famous words, " Trop tard, 
Sire" ("Too late, Sire"). One may with equal justice 
now say to the French nation, with regard to their 
belated admiration for Napoleon, " Messieurs, c'est trop 
tard" 

The campaigns of 1805-6-7, just on account of their 
classical completeness and perfection, are, in spite of 
the bewildering details, simple and easily intelligible. 
When Napoleon learnt that the Austrians and the Rus- 
sians were marching against him in the valley of the 
Danube, while he was apparently watching England 
from his camp at Boulogne, he suddenly hurled his 
whole army from the north of France across the Rhine 
to the Upper Danube. As already mentioned in another 
lecture, Napoleon's chief point was to prevent the Rus- 
sians from joining the Austrians. To that effect he 
directed the marches of his various columns in the 
minutest details, timing them for every hour of their 



y6 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

march. He never doubted that the Austrians under 
General Mack, who was at Ulm, would expect him to 
debouch from the Black Forest, that is, to make on 
Mack a frontal attack. For although Napoleon had 
in all his previous campaigns invariably given clear 
signs of his predilection for flanking movements, and 
of his constant anxiety to place himself on his enemy's 
communications, yet he rightly credited Mack with utter 
neglect of the elements of true strategy. 

The French columns had rapidly converged on the 
Upper Danube, near Dillingen, long before Kutusow, 
the Russian general, had joined Mack, and a few bat- 
tles fought by Napoleon's marshals against disconcerted 
Mack finished the circumvention of the Austrian gen- 
eral, so that he was forced to surrender with nearly 
his whole army at Ulm. It was then that the French 
troopers, seizing the great strategy of their Emperor, 
summed up the whole Ulm campaign in the famous 
remark, " Now the little Corporal [meaning Napoleon] 
makes us win his campaign by our legs." Napoleon, 
after that signal victory, at once advanced through the 
valley of the Danube on Vienna, which he entered ; 
the allied Austrians and Russians had moved up to 
Moravia, whither they wanted to entice Napoleon, so 
as to crush him by one great victory, thousands of miles 
from his natural basis. However, Napoleon had care- 
fully secured both his left flank in Bohemia, and his 
right flank on the Danube, so that even in the worst 
case he could have returned unmolested on his own 
communications. Instead of being defeated, Napoleon 
won, on December 2d, 1805, what was probably the 
most classical of his victories over the Austro- Russian 



NAPOLEON.— II yj 

army. In that battle, where he had fewer soldiers than 
the allies, Napoleon assumed a defensive attitude ; he 
waited for the allies to attack him and hoped to avail 
himself of their blunders. Napoleon's army facing the 
east of Moravia was drawn up in three divisions, and 
according to his correct conception the allies ought to 
have attacked his left flank. However, they attacked 
first his right flank, and when he saw from a distance 
that the allies were moving on his right flank, he im- 
mediately grasped their profound strategic error and 
exclaimed, " Cette armee est a moi!" ("That army is 
mine ! ") For in the whole battle the great tactical and 
strategical idea was to drive the allies in the direction 
in which they could not but move further south to the 
frozen lakes of Satzau, while Napoleon's left flank was 
enveloping them in their rear, in their own left flank. 
The battle was formidable, but Napoleon's victory was 
complete. Alexander of Russia was dismayed, Francis 
of Austria sued for peace, and by the treaty of Press- 
burg Austria was completely deprived of a large part 
of her territory and was reduced to a third-rate Power. 
The position now obtained by Napoleon gave him the 
power to raise, as a counterpoise to Austria, some minor 
states of Germany to positions of higher dignity and 
power, and accordingly he made Bavaria and Saxony 
into kingdoms, endowing them with a great number of 
ecclesiastical and other territories, and thereby attach- 
ing them solidly to his own interest. This, together 
with the great territorial redistribution of Germany in 
1805 (mentioned above), completed the disunion of the 
ancient Holy Roman Empire, which in the next year, 
1806, was formally declared extinct by the Emperor 



y8 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Francis himself. The immediate consequences, there- 
fore, of the campaign of 1805 were the extinction of 
the Holy Roman Empire and the commencement of an 
entirely new Germany, the forerunner of modern Ger- 
many. 

The next great campaign, against Prussia, occurred 
in 1806, in October. Prussia had so far abstained from 
all the military complications caused by the French 
Revolution and Napoleon, since the beginning of 1795, 
and had thereby committed the gravest blunder that 
any great state in Europe can possibly commit. It be- 
longs to the elements of European policy ever since the 
Renaissance, that each great state must in turn take 
an active interest in all the great questions of Europe. 
Such as preach peace and non-intervention preach in 
reality war and degradation. Europe can, from its very 
historic growth, never be turned into a peaceful United 
States. The peace kept by the citizens of the United 
States since 1865 in a territory almost as large as the 
whole of Europe is owing mainly to the very circum- 
stance, to the very cause, of which in Europe there 
does not exist the faintest trace. That circumstance, 
that cause, is the marvellous uniformity and homo- 
geneity of the American people. In Europe the dif- 
ferentiation of nations and peoples is, on the other 
hand, so far advanced ; the individualization, the per- 
sonal characters and traits of each little nation are so 
marked, so profound, so uncompromising, so irrecon- 
cilable, that peace, non-intervention, and all similar 
ideal dreams of rich bankers or multi-millionaires can- 
not possibly apply to Europe. Whenever in European 
history we study the period of a nation that has for 



NAPOLEON. — II 79 

one motive or another kept peace, given up martial 
aggressiveness, in other words acted up to the advice 
of the modern millionaire philanthropists, we invariably 
find that nation come to grief and to ruin. Consider 
in modern times the dual Empire on the Danube, 
Austro-Hungary. Since 1866 she has carefully and 
most unwisely abstained from interfering with the wars 
of the French, the English, the Russians, etc., and has 
consequently suffered an abatement of prestige and a 
loss of real power such as she never suffered in the 
times of her greatest defeats under Napoleon. 

This reflection literally applies to Prussia under 
Frederick William II. and Frederick William III. 
Having kept peace and abstained from any military 
interference from April, 1795, to October, 1806, that 
is, for nearly eleven years, during which time Europe 
was shaking with the most tremendous campaigns, 
waged from Cape St. Vincent to Copenhagen, and from 
the county of Kerry in Ireland to the desert shores of 
Syria, Prussia was now reaping the benefit of that peace- 
ful abstention. While the French had, during all these 
wars, created an army of the highest order and developed 
the greatest of modern military captains; while the 
French people at large had received a political education 
such as neither themselves nor any other nation has ever 
obtained for the vast majority of its population ; in 
Prussia the army was rotten, the officers and generals 
were rotten, the people were rotten. 

For it is now well known that in October and No- 
vember, 1806, Europe witnessed with amazement the 
terrible collapse of the Prussian monarchy and people, 
when in consequence of one double victory at Jena 



8o FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

and Auerstaedt on the same day, October 14th, 1806, 
the whole of the Prussian monarchy, with nearly all 
its fortresses (many of which surrendered on being 
summoned by a few French cavalry battalions) fell 
into the hands of the French, and Napoleon, a few 
days after the victory of Jena, entered Berlin. What 
stigmatized that collapse as one of unprecedented shame 
is that the Prussian nation, as has been said, not only 
did not manifest the slightest desire or intention of 
resisting the French, but in their moral degradation, 
actually and positively toadied to them, receiving the 
great conqueror with cheers when he entered Berlin. 
From the interesting memoirs of Thiebault we learn 
the most astounding details about the entire incapacity 
of the Prussians to comprehend the immensity of their 
disaster. Really, in thinking of the facility with which 
in times without railways and telegraphs, Napoleon 
was able to conquer Austria and Prussia and the whole 
of Germany in a few weeks, one cannot but admit that 
his vast dreams of a real world-empire do not, from 
the military standpoint, seem to have been unjustified. 
As we now know from the study of all his campaigns, 
the only serious and persistent resistance that Napo- 
leon found in Europe previous to 1813, was on the part 
of the Spanish and Russians on land and the English 
on sea, so that both, the powers the most backward on 
land and the most advanced and richest nation on sea, 
formed the only serious obstacle to Napoleon's dreams 
of a world conqueror. 

The campaign in 1807 waged in Poland and north- 
east Prussia ended, after great difficulties which 
Napoleon vainly attempts to disguise in his official 



NAPOLEON. — II 8 1 

despatches, with the hard-won victory of Friedland 
(1807). During that campaign Napoleon had all the 
opportunities of studying and organizing the great 
problem of unfortunate Poland. The Poles themselves 
considered him as their liberator, and hoping as they 
did to undo through his might the three partitions 
of Poland (of 1772, 1793, and 1795), by which that 
once powerful republic had been parcelled out, and 
thus extinguished, they helped Napoleon in every 
possible way, finding food and soldiers for him ; and 
one of their charming women, Madame de Walewska, 
for whom Napoleon had a very serious attachment, 
was used by the Poles as an instrument for the res- 
toration of the whole monarchy at the hands of Na- 
poleon. However, Napoleon would not grant them 
their chief dream, and only restored the independence 
of Poland as a duchy, united, as in the first half of the 
eighteenth century, with Saxony. It may be doubted 
whether Napoleon's Polish policy was not after all a 
greater blunder than his Spanish policy proved to be. 
It can scarcely be questioned that had he, by the 
restoration of independent Poland, attached to himself 
the interest, the enthusiasm, and the genius of that 
gifted nation, he would have had, whether against 
Russia or against Germany, an ally more useful, more 
efficient, than either Saxony or Bavaria could ever be. 
It is difficult to say what motives prompted Napoleon 
to create in west-central Germany a so-called Rhenish 
Confederation, and to omit creating a strong Poland 
in the east of Germany and under the very eyes of 
Russia. For rather than create that artificial Rhenish 
Confederation which had its roots neither in history 



82 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

nor in the soil, he ought to have consolidated a strongly 
timbered Poland, and thus have had a very reliable basis 
in the east of Europe, as he had one in the west (France) 
and in the south (Italy). 

Instead of all that, Napoleon, after the victory of 
Friedland, practically proposed to Alexander a parti- 
tion of the world, although nobody saw more clearly 
than Napoleon that there was no possible reliance in 
the cunning Russian Emperor, whose sentimentality 
and esprit were only the guise of an uncontrollable, 
false, hypocritical, and untrustworthy character. The 
treaty of Tilsit concluded by the two Emperors placed 
Napoleon for the next four years at the head of all the 
Powers. Even Prince Metternich, who now came to 
the fore, told his Austrian master with unfeigned frank- 
ness that Napoleon was invincible, that, far from any 
idea of combating him in the field, Austria's only policy 
was to win his favour. 

In Prussia, on the other hand, whose beautiful, emo- 
tional, and unpolitic queen, the mother of the late 
William I., had by her impetuousness precipitated 
the war of 1806, and had lived to see the deepest hu- 
miliation of her country, there was no life left. Noth- 
ing can prove this more clearly than the fact that all 
the great men who now set themselves to the work of re- 
storing Prussia, her system of education, her army, her 
municipal organization, her industries, etc., were non- 
Prussian. The most famous of them was Stein. He 
was joined by Hardenberg, by Blucher, Gneisenau, 
Scharnhorst. They all came from non-Prussian coun- 
tries, and it is to their initiative and to their power of 
work that Prussia owes her restoration. 



NAPOLEON. — II 83 

In the next year (1808) Napoleon, as if to show 
to the universe that at his feet lay defeated Europe, 
assembled nearly all the foreign princes of Europe in 
a sort of congress which was held at Erfurt. To the 
great French actor Talma, who performed before the 
sovereigns, Napoleon had promised a "pit of kings." 
This was the heyday of Napoleon's life. 



VI 

NAPOLEON. — III 

WE are now going to study the last period of Napo- 
leon, the period from 1810 to 181 5. With re- 
gard to that agitated time we have a superabundance 
of sources, nearly every general and statesman engaged 
in the military or political affairs of that period having 
left us memoirs, letters, or despatches. Nor have mod- 
ern scholars been slow to avail themselves of the im- 
mense material. On the other hand, the contradictions 
between the sources are so flagrant, that on many a 
detail and with regard to many a great feature of politics, 
let alone greater features of the campaigns, we are still 
in the position of suspending our judgment, of hesitat- 
ing to say the final word. In no struggle of modern 
times have the vanity and pride of nations and the 
deepest and finest susceptibilities *of sovereigns been 
engaged, irritated, nay, outraged, so strongly as in the 
campaigns and diplomatic negotiations of Napoleon 
from 1810 to 1815. 

Vanity, like any other quality of our heart, may 
take the most different kinds of forms. It may be 
disguised under the thin cloak of contempt, or become 
easily audible in the loud cries of indignation. It so 
happens that the pride and vanity of the English, 
the pride and ambition of the Russians and Germans, 
have been stung to the quick by the fruitlessness of 
all their efforts to bring to fall a man who had done 

84 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 85 

them boundless harm, and had for over fifteen years 
disregarded their most sacred traditions and their deep- 
rooted conceit. Napoleon never disguised his contempt 
for the British army, he thought nothing of the German 
corps, and had scarcely a word of praise for the unde- 
niable physical courage of the Russians. It cannot 
be denied that in 18 10, when all his ambition had been 
crowned by the marriage with a Princess of the House 
of Habsburg, Napoleon conceived of the most un- 
measured, disproportionate, and, in common sense, 
absurd plans. This is meant not as a criticism of Na- 
poleon, which the author is far from arrogating to 
himself. For even though we must admit that Napo- 
leon's plans after 18 10 appear to us — that is, to com- 
mon-sense or ordinary judgment — as plans impossible 
of execution, yet we must not for a moment forget that 
what appears absurd to us is not, therefore, necessarily 
absurd when conceived and carried out by Napoleon. 
In the world of science great thinkers conceiving of 
ideas infinitely in advance of their time have been de- 
clared absurd, insane, or foolish ; sometimes, as in the 
case of Descartes, a great thinker himself has declared 
that certain scientific attempts were doomed to hopeless 
failure. Yet even in the case of Descartes we see, that 
he who had discouraged any attempt at creating a cal- 
culus of the infinitesimal was quickly disproved by 
Leibniz and Newton, who, independently, both in- 
vented and established that calculus in the teeth of 
Descartes's predictions. Other examples in the history 
of science abound on every side. May it not be so also 
in the realm of politics ? May not the apparently absurd 
ideas of Napoleon, that is to say, his Oriental plans, his 



86 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

idea of conquering the whole of Asia after having con- 
quered Europe, be among those plans absurd to the 
ordinary man, yet capable of legitimate execution in the 
hands of a genius ? Instead, therefore, of condemning 
wholesale all the actions of Napoleon from 1810 to 
181 5, we might do better to suspend our judgment and 
restrict ourselves to the statement of the main facts, 
leaving our criticism for those parts of the narrative 
where criticism is probably possible. 

It is now evident that from 1810 to 1812 Napoleon's 
power was implicitly and explicitly recognized as in- 
vincible all over the continent of Europe. From Met- 
ternich downwards, there was no serious statesman nor a 
general who honestly believed that Napoleon's military 
supremacy could be broken. After 18 12, after the 
disaster in Russia, that all but universal belief in the 
invincibility of Napoleon began to fade away; in 18 13, 
after the disaster of Leipsic, it ceased to exist, and in 18 14 
and 181 5 it was turned into its opposite. These are the 
main points of the facts and opinions we are now to con- 
sider. There remains another point in which we can- 
not but offend the national and traditional feelings of a 
great nation, or at any rate of the majority of that nation : 
we mean the almost unanimous opinion in England that 
England saved Europe from Napoleon. That opinion, 
frequently accepted in books written by French authors 
too, has not the slightest possible basis in fact. In all 
the immense struggles between England and the French 
from 1793 to 181 5, the English were able to secure not 
a single decisive victory on land single-handed, and it 
was only on sea, in 1798 in Aboukir Bay, and in 1805 
off Trafalgar, that the English secured a decisive victory 



NAPOLEON. — Ill $? 

over the French and Spanish fleets. Nothing can alter 
these facts. The attempts of the English to drive out 
the French from Belgium in 1793-94-95 met with ab- 
solute failure and terminated in the hasty retreat of the 
British army under the Duke of York. Other attempts 
to land armies on French soil, such as in 1799 under 
Abercrombie, and in 1809 under the Earl of Chatham, 
met with absolute disaster. The British were unable to 
deprive the French of any one single victory, or of the 
conquests they made on the Continent from 1792 to 
18 12. It was only when the French army after twenty 
years' continuous fighting had been reduced in number, 
in force, and in morale, that in the last battle Wellington, 
most decisively aided by the Prussians under Bliicher, 
won a victory over Napoleon. The victories of Welling- 
ton in the Peninsular War have been described with all 
the exaggeration and " advertisement " natural in the 
case of smaller nations, who succeed in securing a vic- 
tory over a greater nation. As the Scotch to the present 
day vaunt their victory of Bannockburn, ignoring Halli- 
don-Hill, Neville's Cross, and other innumerable English 
victories over them, so the English, then very much smaller 
in numbers than the French, have by constant repetition 
so magnified the successes of Wellington in Spain, that 
the Peninsular War is, in the eyes of most British 
citizens, a British and nothing but a British success. 
The truth is of quite a different nature. It has been 
said that Spain was the grave of Napoleon : if that be 
so, we must hasten to add that the diggers of that grave 
were Spanish. Wellington's activity in Spain did not 
take up one-seventh of the country. It was practically 
limited in the first five years of the war to a territory 



88 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

bounded in the north by Oporto and Valladolid, in the 
south by a line from Lisbon to Algarve, and in the east 
a little outside the Portuguese frontier. In all the other 
six-sevenths of the Peninsula the heroic Spanish people 
were maintaining a tremendous struggle against 200,000, 
sometimes 300,000, French regular troops under able 
French marshals, such as Suchet, Lannes, Soult, and 
others. The campaigns, irregular and regular, waged 
by the Spanish against the French were incessant, ac- 
companied by the utmost disregard for life and the 
wholesale devastation of the towns ; without that unpar- 
alleled resistance of the Spanish people Wellington, as 
he himself says in his despatch dated Cartaxo, 21st De- 
cember, 1 8 10, could not have seriously thought of driving 
the French out of the Peninsula. With all due recog- 
nition of the prudence and general efficiency of Welling- 
ton (an efficiency seriously impaired by his absolute 
incapability of tolerating any talent or initiative on the 
part of his lieutenants), with all necessary recognition 
of the moral effects of his victory at Salamanca in 18 12, 
one cannot but see that his former victories previous to 
18 12, that is, during the time when Napoleon's power 
was still unbroken, were all merely of a tactical nature 
and were strategically of no importance. Thus we see 
him in Spain in 1809 win, with the help of Cuesta, the 
battle of Talavera, but having misread the strategical 
position (i.e. ignored the coming of Soult in his rear), he 
was forced to leave his wounded and baggage on the 
battlefield and again retire into Portugal. The same 
movement of advance crowned by tactical victories and 
followed up by retreats into Portugal is to be noticed in 
18 10, when the advent of Massena forced Wellington, 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 89 

in spite of a few tactical successes, to retreat behind the 
intrenchments of Torres Vedras. It was likewise in 
181 1, in spite of the victory of Albuera, most gloriously 
won by the soldiers of Beresf ord ; nay, it was even so in 
18 1 2 after the victory of Salamanca, when Wellington 
was again forced to retreat into Portugal. So that in 
the first four years of his campaign, in spite of the 
heroic help, direct and indirect, given him by the Span- 
ish nation, who occupied in other engagements the 
majority of the French army, Wellington was able to 
make no substantial headway compared with the de- 
cisive and rapid progress of Buonaparte in the few 
months from April, 1796, to January, 1797, when, as 
we have seen above, he not only won tactical but stra- 
tegical victories, and moved his small army on one ad- 
vancing line right into the heart of the Austrian Empire, 
with little or no aid from the Italian people. Napoleon 
had been forced already in May, 1796, to suppress a 
revolt of the Italians in Pavia, and later on in Verona, 
where the French sick and wounded were massacred by 
the Italians. 

Considering the Peninsular campaign in its main 
features only, and leaving out tactical details, for which 
the conflicting reports of the Spanish, the French, and 
the English furnish no solid foundation, we are enabled 
to reduce it to the following short statement. Welling- 
ton's plan was to move on a straight line from Lisbon 
to Salamanca, to Valladolid, across the Pyrenees, and to 
enter France. The length of that line amounts to from 
four to five weeks' marches. The net upshot of all his 
activity is that it took him six years to arrive at the other 
end of that line in France at Toulouse in April, 18 14. 



90 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

He made no real headway on that line before 1813, that 
is, before the time that Napoleon's power had been 
broken at Leipsic, and Napoleon had been recalling most 
of his better troops from Spain. It was only when 
Napoleon's power had been completely crushed by the 
allies, that is, the Prussians, the Austrians, and the 
Russians in 18 13 and 18 14, that Wellington was able to 
enter France, only to learn that Napoleon had already 
been forced to abdicate. 

Meanwhile the Spanish in the southeast and north- 
east of Spain had been carrying on a relentless guerilla 
war against the French, but had also failed to make 
any substantial military progress. It is therefore an 
exaggeration to say that the Peninsular War was the 
grave of Napoleon. The Peninsular War was, con- 
sidering the vast dimensions of Napoleon's military 
power, to be considered in the light of a local up- 
heaval, which certainly kept engaged parts of Napo- 
leon's forces, but which could interfere with none of 
his essential military enterprises nor fatally counteract 
any of his plans. In fact, it was during the height of 
the Peninsular War that Napoleon undertook his most 
gigantic military enterprise, carrying over half a million 
soldiers into the heart of Russia. Napoleon himself 
was more annoyed than angry over the Peninsular War. 
True he would in the end not read the despatches from 
his generals, but on the whole he could not doubt, and 
was entitled to believe, that a decisive success in Russia 
would have automatically ended any further attempt of 
the Spanish nation, as his decisive success in 1809 at 
Wagram automatically finished the fanatic resistance 
of the Tirolese people. In reality, therefore, the grave 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 91 

of Napoleon was dug neither by Wellington nor by the 
Spanish. 

Whatever new details we may still learn about the 
events during the Peninsular War, the above strategic 
considerations can never be altered. Whether we con- 
sider the campaign of Gustavus Adolphus, who, with 
an army of his own of no more than 30,000 men, was 
able to conquer Germany by a few decisive battles in 
less than eighteen months ; or whether we consider 
the campaigns of Marlborough, who by one rapid 
march and a decisive victory in 1704, saved the Ger- 
man Empire from succumbing to an invasion of French- 
men, Bavarians, and Magyars ; or whether we consider 
the campaigns of Frederick the Great, who in exactly 
one month defeated, and decisively too, the French 
and the Imperial army at Rosbach and the Austrians 
at Leuthen, from the 5th of November, 1757, to the 
5th of December of the same year ; even so, when we 
are seriously contemplating the campaigns of Napoleon, 
either in Italy or in far-off Egypt and Syria, let alone 
his campaigns in Austria or Prussia, we cannot, unless 
we yield to unthinking patriotism, attribute to Welling- 
ton any decisive action or any great generalship in the 
Peninsular War. 

Another and very interesting question arises as to 
the attitude of the Spanish people to Napoleon. The 
Spanish king, in whose name they were fighting with 
such terrible resolution, was the most worthless crea- 
ture that ever sat on the Spanish throne, and his son 
and heir-apparent was, if possible, more wretched still. 
That alone is sufficient to confound any historian in the 
attempt to comprehend the attitude of the Spanish. 



92 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

But when one considers that the royal family, for 
whom the Spanish were combating with such fanati- 
cism, was purely French, was Bourbon, and that 
Napoleon was only offering them one Frenchman (his 
own brother) for another (Charles IV. of Spain), one 
utterly fails to understand the bitterness of a nation 
that had quite lately, in 1805, fought side by side with 
the French against their common enemy, the English. 
It seems certain that this attitude of the Spanish people 
is historically more important than either their grand 
coup in 1808, when Castanos succeeded in capturing 
at Baylen a French army of 24,000 regulars under 
Dupont (the greatest military achievement in the whole 
Peninsular War), or any other military attempt on their 
own part. For, on a little consideration, we cannot 
but come to the conclusion that a nation sacrificing 
life, money, and all worldly estate in a desperate fight 
in the interests of an unworthy, cruel, and tyrannical 
royalty is thereby sealing her own fate. Other nations 
fought for liberty from the French yoke that had op- 
pressed them for years ; the Spanish nation fought 
before the French had had any opportunity of placing 
them under a yoke. The Spanish fought, instigated 
by their clergy, and when the war of liberation, as they 
erroneously called it, was ended in 18 14, they found 
out that they had only played the game of the very 
powers that were most hostile to their own interests, 
and whom Napoleon wanted to remove. The Spanish 
had wasted all their moral and physical forces in an 
absurd fight against the principles of modern liberal- 
ism offered to them by Napoleon, and thus lost all 
capacity or real desire for the modern system of liberal 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 93 

government. In other words, it may be said that in 
the Peninsular War a grave indeed was dug, but it was 
not the grave of Napoleon, it was the grave of the 
Spanish nation. The Spanish, once the most profound 
politicians, failed to see that they were, in this Pen- 
insular War, only helping the English in a suicidal 
fashion, just as under William III. and Queen Anne 
the Dutch followed the suicidal policy of helping the 
English against the French; and as the Dutch have 
since sunk to a fifth-rate nation, so have the Spanish. 
It was in the well-understood interest of Spain not to 
oppose Napoleon ; Spain could have only gained thereby, 
as did Bavaria, as did even Saxony, and so many other 
States, which, by adopting the wiser policy of friend- 
ship with Napoleon, survived even his downfall. How- 
ever, there was no statesman able to see the true trend 
of events in Spain, and between radical democrats and 
a reactionary clergy, the Spanish nation was falling 
back into its ancient slavery under Church and Crown. 
Probably Napoleon, who had in the highest degree that 
perfect equilibrium of mental capacities which is the 
highest form of common sense, could not but assume 
that nations do, in the end, follow the dictates of com- 
mon sense, and that the Spanish would sooner or later 
see their folly in prolonging by the interested help of 
England a war which meant desolation to Spain and 
subjection to the Spanish people. However, nations 
go by passions and not by common sense. Even the 
circumstance that the Spanish colonies in America, 
utilizing the plight of the mother-country, had actually 
risen in open revolt in 1810, and were certain to cut 
loose from Spain, should Spain continue the unequal 



94 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

and murderous fight with Napoleon, did not alter the 
absurd policy of the Spanish ; while, on the other hand, 
it made the Peninsular War more than worth continuing 
for the English. England had always desired the liber- 
ation of the American Latin colonies. The Spanish 
therefore in that war dug the grave not only of their 
own civic liberties, but also of their colonial empire. 

These are, we take it, the true proportions of the 
Peninsular War. The Spanish now begin to see it, 
but it is too late. It is one of the ironies of fate that 
an otherwise worthless individual, the Spanish minister 
Godoy, and the wretched king himself, by recommend- 
ing the French alliance, proceeded, as a matter of fact, 
if not by noble intention, on the right lines of policy 
for Spain. The alternative was very simple. Was 
Napoleon able to continue his sway over Europe for 
good ? If so, then Spain, by being allied with France or 
even under French suzerainty, could only win the pros- 
perity that France enjoyed under Napoleon, and after 
Napoleon's death she could easily secure her political 
independence. A nation is certain to outlive an indi- 
vidual. On the other hand, was Napoleon to be 
brought to fall as came to be the case ? Then Spain 
could choose her own road and her own government 
as she pleased. In either case she would have avoided 
the terrible Peninsular War that in the end served only 
the interest of the most obscurantist clergy in the world, 
and of Great Britain. 

While Napoleon, in autumn, 1808, was entering Spain 
and chasing Moore before him, he, to his great surprise, 
learnt at Astorga, that a new coalition of England and 
Austria had been made against him. His anger on 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 95 

learning the news was not feigned. He had defeated 
Austria so frequently since 1 796 ; he had deprived her 
of so much of her territory, and had humiliated her so 
deeply, that he actually failed to see what interest 
Austria could have in commencing a new war, and 
what justification she had for any legitimate hopes of 
success. He was well aware that Austria was subsi- 
dized by England ; on the other hand, he knew that the 
finances of Austria were in such a poor condition that 
even England could do very little for her. As a matter 
of fact the leading military authority in Austria, Arch- 
duke Charles, strongly advised his brother, the Em- 
peror Francis, not to wage a new war, considering the 
total unpreparedness of Austria for war with the trained 
and victorious armies of Napoleon. Francis had always 
been obstinate, vain, conceited, and the ultimate success 
of his life seems a posteriori to confirm all the exagger- 
ated notions that that limited mind had conceived of 
his own power and insight. There can be no greater 
contrast than that between Napoleon and Francis. 
Nearly of the same age, they differed in every other 
quality. Francis was just as small, petty, silly, as Napo- 
leon was great, ingenious, and creative; yet Francis spent 
the last twenty years of his life as the most powerful 
potentate in Europe, and Napoleon wasted the last 
six years of his life on a solitary rock in the At- 
lantic. 

Napoleon did not hesitate to leave Spain and return 
against Austria with the firm intention of crippling 
Austria forever. The campaign took place in 1809, 
and consists of three distinct sections: 1st, the cam- 
paign in the valley of the Danube between Munich 



g6 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

and Ratisbon ; 2d, the campaign of Aspern ; and 3d, 
the campaign of Wagram. In the first campaign Arch- 
duke Charles at first worsted the French generals, or 
at any rate, came near defeating their purpose. How- 
ever, Napoleon came up in time, and by one of those 
very rapid and bold movements that he had so success- 
fully practised in all his former campaigns, he placed 
himself on the communications of Charles, worsted him 
in the battles of Eckmuhl and Ratisbon, and forced him 
to retreat through Bohemia into Lower Austria. The 
second campaign was disastrous for the Emperor. As 
we now know, the Austrians had in the battle of Aspern 
(which lasted for three days) considerably more soldiers 
than Napoleon, and in spite of all the desperate heroism 
of Napoleon's men, Aspern was not definitely taken 
by them, and Napoleon was obliged to re-cross the 
Danube and make his headquarters on the isle of 
Lobau. By a stray bullet Napoleon's best friend and 
one of his greatest marshals, Lannes, was killed in this 
battle, and Napoleon seemed to be quite overcome by 
grief. The news of Aspern went like a thunderbolt 
through the whole of Europe. For the first time the 
invincible Emperor had met with a serious reverse, and 
all the various generals, every one of whom had in his 
pocket an infallible plan for securing the defeat of 
Napoleon, were now listened to with greater attention. 
The English having meanwhile sent an expedition of 
40,000 men to the isle of Walcheren in Holland, so that 
the Emperor's flank was apparently in serious danger, 
the position of Napoleon seemed very precarious. How- 
ever, Napoleon fully retrieved his reverse at Aspern by 
the brilliant victory of Wagram a few weeks later. He 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 9/ 

had made his preparations for the battle with such pro- 
found foresight, that scarcely two hours after the com- 
mencement of the battle, he declared it virtually won 
by him, and, feeling fatigued, he lay down on a rug 
for a short sleep, amidst the roaring of over 1200 can- 
non and 150,000 rifles. The battle was won by him, 
Archduke Charles was forced to retreat, and Austria 
was compelled to accept the very harsh conditions of 
the treaty of Schonbrunn, by which the territory and 
the population of Austria were very considerably re- 
duced, so that Austria, like Prussia in 1806, was made 
a second-rate power, and Napoleon's ascendency over 
the rest of Continental Europe was more consolidated 
than ever. The Walcheren expedition, as is well 
known, came quickly to grief by disease, and so missed 
entirely its point. 

A study of the campaign of 1809, of the conduct of 
Austria and England, and of the minor powers, cannot 
but give us the impression that the wholesale con- 
demnation of Napoleon as a man who had no regard 
for human life, and who pandered only to his own 
boundless ambition, cannot for a moment be upheld, 
in the face of the facts revealed by Austrian diplomacy 
in 1809, or, as we have seen, by Prussian policy in 
1806. The truth is, that the sovereigns of Europe were 
unteachable, and just as greedy for new territory and 
just as reckless and unfeeling for the sufferings of their 
nation as Napoleon had ever been, or is said to have 
been. Even if we should admit that Napoleon's ambi- 
tion exceeded legitimate bounds, we cannot but notice 
that his unprecedented genius entitled him to hopes and 
ambitions far beyond what a Francis II. or a Frederick 



98 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

William III. of Prussia could reasonably claim ; and if 
the conduct of Napoleon in 1808 and 1809 * s reprehen- 
sible, the conduct of England and Austria is undoubt- 
edly more reprehensible still. England, to satiate her 
jealousy and hatred of Napoleon, whom for so many 
years she was unable to touch, in spite of her very 
greatest efforts — England encourage the Spanish to 
bleed themselves to death in a hopeless, bootless, and 
objectless war against Napoleon. In the same way the 
Emperor of Austria caused the heroic Tirolese, in 1809, 
and the other numerous nations of his realm, to bleed 
themselves to death in a war which he had recklessly 
provoked, against the opinion of the best military judg- 
ment of his country, and without any serious hope of 
making good the losses he had sustained in 1805. 

A new man came now to be the first minister of 
Austria — Prince Metternich, one of the strangest, most 
interesting, and for a long time most important, historical 
figures of European history. His was the power of 
being interesting and important during his lifetime, 
but, like a sterile beauty, his power left no inheritance, 
and he has long ceased to count as a great historical 
factor. Like the great actor he was, he instinctively 
felt that posterity would wind no wreaths for him, 
and that his heyday and triumph depended on pass- 
ing circumstances of his own life. His vanity was 
greater than his genius ; he certainly had very much 
diplomatic dexterity ; he knew the persons and the 
causes of his time from personal and extensive know- 
ledge ; he was attractive, charming, instructive. In 
1809 he counselled Francis to maintain what Francis 
ought to have maintained after 1802, that is, friend- 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 99 

ship with Napoleon. The marriage between Napoleon 
and Marie Louise, the daughter of Francis, was chiefly 
Metternich's work. 

It is, one cannot help remarking, a very strange 
coincidence that, as the West Indies have given to 
the French Crown two of her most charming and 
most important royal spouses (Madame de Maintenon 
had spent the best years of her first youth in the West 
Indies, and Napoleon's first wife, Josephine, was of 
West Indian origin), so, on the other hand, Austria 
had ever since the fated marriage of Marie Antoinette 
with Louis XVI., and, in fact, ever since the coalition 
with Austria, made by Kaunitz in 1756, brought nothing 
but disaster to the French. Napoleon, who, like all 
Southern people, entertained a belief in lucky and 
unlucky persons, had always thought Josephine was 
his Mascotte, and strange to say, a few years after he 
divorced Josephine, his luck deserted him completely. 
It is equally true that the entrance of another Habs- 
burg princess into the ruling house of France brought 
upon Napoleon nothing but shame and disaster. 
Marie Louise was the most flippant, the most sensual, 
and morally the weakest woman of her time. When 
Napoleon was still in Elba, in 18 14, as the prisoner 
of Europe, and while she was already mother of a son 
by Napoleon, she abandoned herself to a one-eyed, 
wizened and wasted roiii, forgetting both her origin 
and her duty. Metternich himself had a belief in 
lucky and unlucky persons, and it is not unreasonable 
to assume that he urged the negotiations regarding 
the marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise with 
some mystic belief in the disaster to be produced by 

LOFC. 



100 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the connection of Napoleon with the House of Austria. 
For, as now everybody knows, the House of Austria 
is, of all the reigning houses in the world, the one 
that has been visited, to our own times, with the 
greatest number of most shocking disasters, just as in 
the eighteenth century the Habsburgs brought nothing 
but ill-luck to either the Bourbons or Napoleon. 

Napoleon himself, when he learnt of the birth of 
his son, seemed to be at the height of glory and 
happiness. Now that his dynasty was assured, he 
seemed to know no bounds in his ambitions, in his 
dreams. It is here that, as we said before, the se- 
rious student of history must pause and hesitate for 
a long time before venturing on a judgment of a 
historic personality that, like the great founders of 
religion, is so unique, so complicated, that we have in 
reality no measure to comprehend it. It is well known 
in ordinary life that nothing is easier than to miscon- 
strue any character that exceeds normal mediocrity; 
in the case of Napoleon we have a character exceeding 
the general and exceptional run of mankind to an un- 
precedented extent. This very circumstance must neces- 
sarily entail a lessened probability of sound judgment 
on him. It appears that Napoleon, after the birth of 
his child, had definitely made up his mind to conquer 
Russia and to start on the realization of his oriental 
plans. As he himself remarked, in all his actions he 
was prompted by some inner voice or vocation, not un- 
like to that Daemon to which Socrates ascribed his ideas 
and the motives of most of his actions. It has been re- 
served for a professor of ancient history in Berlin to il- 
luminate the history of Socrates by the declaration that 



NAPOLEON. — Ill 10 1 

Socrates's Daemon is only tantamount to the habit of 
some people of counting the buttons on their coats in 
order to get a negative or a positive answer in moments 
of wavering resolution. Should Professor Edward Meyer, 
in the course of time, reach the period of Napoleon, we 
shall no doubt learn that Napoleon's inner voices (let 
alone those of Jeanne d'Arc) were only like a game of 
toss-up played by boys for a piece of cake. However, it 
may be submitted that in history, especially in that 
part of it that happens outside the dusty library of a 
scholar, there are such voices, there are such inward 
callings given to men like Columbus, Richelieu, Na- 
poleon, Bismarck, or to women like Jeanne d'Arc. It 
consists in the absolute, the irresistible conviction that 
they are to do some great thing for humanity, and 
accordingly they do it. They are unable to analyze 
those voices, to formulate them scientifically, or to give 
any reasonable account of them — what they know is 
that the voices are there, that they actuate, prompt, 
urge, and force them to do what in the end they do 
achieve. It was a feeling of that vocation, a vocation 
that we may now call the task of spreading all over 
Europe the ideas and principles of the French Revo- 
lution, such as that of equality before the law, the 
abolition of feudal regimes, the abolition of castes, 
etc., that probably prompted Napoleon, in spite of 
himself, to undertake the Russian campaign, which, 
on strictly military principles, nobody could have 
condemned more than he did himself. Let us consider 
the chief facts from the military standpoint. Napoleon 
knew that in going to Russia he was violating all the 
principles of strategy which, in innumerable despatches 



102 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

and conversations, he had inculcated upon his gen- 
erals, which he had unremittingly required from them, 
and for the neglect of which he had frequently severely 
punished them. These were the principle of concen- 
tration, the principle of the nearness of the basis, the 
principle that the enemy can be brought to surrender 
only when you can place yourself on his communica- 
tions (a principle practically unrealizable in Russia). 
All these principles Napoleon consciously violated by 
entering on his Russian campaign in 1812. 

If we now consider the political and economic 
aspect of the question, we come to the same con- 
clusion. To put it plainly, Russia was then not worth 
having ; it was unable to feed the huge army of Napo- 
leon ; it had none of the treasure that Napoleon found 
in Lombardy in 1796 and 1797; it offered no advan- 
tage whatever in point of industry or commerce or 
even agriculture. Even nowadays it is economi- 
cally very backward, and it will take generations 
and generations before Russia can be made an ob- 
ject of prey as valuable as was Italy or Germany even 
in Napoleon's time. If we consider finally the oriental 
plans of Napoleon, there was scarcely anything to gain 
from a conquest of Russia as she then was, for Russia 
had scarcely reached the Caucasus, and the defeat of 
Alexander gave Napoleon no footing whatever in Asia 
Minor or the Caucasus. Had Napoleon in 18 12, instead 
of defeating Alexander, attempted to destroy the Turkish 
Empire, he might have made some substantial progress, 
considering that the British fleet was more and more 
engaged in America. The destruction of the Turkish 
Empire had long been in his mind, and his instructions 



NAPOLEON.— Ill IO3 

in 1809, to Marmont, who was governor of the Illyrian 
provinces, close to Turkey, were evidently given with 
the view of a near campaign against Turkey. 

All these and other minor considerations, not one of 
which was alien to Napoleon, rendered the campaign 
in Russia a superfluous, useless, uninteresting enter- 
prise. Napoleon had learnt that even Austria, after 
repeated signal defeats at his hands, found means of 
rising against him in 1805 and 1809 for the third and 
fourth time. How could he reasonably suppose that 
even a defeated Russia would not imitate Austria at 
least another two or three times, trying to shake off the 
yoke of the French Emperor ? 

These and similar arguments were put before Napo- 
leon after he had arrived with his huge army at Kowno, 
and Napoleon seemed to be deeply impressed by them, 
for he said to Berthier, the chief of his military cabinet, 
that he would give up the campaign and return west. 
The joy in the army was universal. However, the next 
day the order came to march eastward to Russia, and 
when Berthier asked the Emperor to what motives he 
had yielded in the sudden change of yesterday's resolu- 
tion, the Emperor looked dreamily into the air and 
said, " I do not know." And so the immense army, the 
largest that had up to that time ever been collected in 
Europe, went on to the steppes of Russia, the left wing 
of Napoleon being led by Macdonald, his right wing 
by Prince Schwarzenberg, and the centre by Napoleon 
himself. The Russians retreated before him ; in all the 
smaller engagements the French were victorious, but 
in the battle of the Moskowa (also called Borodino) 
the Russians, under Kutusow, offered the most fright- 



104 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

ful resistance. The battle (September 7th) lasted from 
live o'clock in the morning till late at night. Kutusow 
spent the night in his own camp and only retreated the 
next day. In other words, Napoleon's victory in that 
famous battle was only technical but not strategical; 
he had not annihilated the Russian army, and Alex- 
ander was therefore not forced to surrender to him. 
Napoleon entered Moscow, and even his oldest veterans 
were, it appears, in a state of ecstasy at the sight of 
that immense and — for all the Slavs and many of the 
Orientals — sacred town, which in Russia and north- 
eastern Asia is largely considered to be what Mekka 
is in southwestern Asia. Napoleon spent several 
weeks at Moscow waiting for Alexander's surrender; 
however, Alexander did not surrender. The desperate 
Russians set fire to the town, Napoleon was forced 
to retreat, and now followed that horrible disaster, the 
greatest in modern times, when the French army, 
harassed by the Cossacks, emaciated by cold and 
famine died by thousands every day, so that the famous 
disaster or catastrophe on the Berezina is only one 
amongst many, and when the Grande Armee reached 
the western confines of Russia, it had melted down to a 
few thousand men. A thrill of horror went through the 
whole of Europe ; most people saw in the terrible disaster 
the finger of God, who had punished an overambitious 
titan, and many of Napoleon's friends began to despair 
of him. 



VII 

NAPOLEON. — IV 

M ^HE sovereigns of Europe had no sooner learnt of 
-*- the great disaster in Russia than they prepared 
to make a new coalition against Napoleon in order to 
bring about his final downfall. If one reads their proc- 
lamations, one would be induced to think that their 
only intention was the general welfare of Europe, 
which they said was seriously jeopardized by the 
boundless ambition of the French Emperor. How- 
ever, like all political manifestoes, the proclamations 
of the sovereigns were on the whole mere pretexts to 
cover their real intentions, to disguise from the glance 
of the mistaken nations of Europe the fact which, 
a few months after Napoleon's downfall, was to be 
manifest to the dullest of European citizens, but which 
in 1813, 1 8 14, and 181 5 neither the enthusiastic poets 
nor the learned professors were able to foresee. That 
fact was that the sovereigns in reality only meant to 
place the whole of Europe under a bondage far more 
objectionable, far more injurious to all the higher 
interests of Europe, far more reactionary than anything 
that Napoleon had ever contemplated doing. It is now 
well known that for over thirty-five years after Napo- 
leon's downfall the whole of Europe was kept under 
a regime of the most abominable reaction ; that the 
slightest tendency on the part of the people to establish 

105 



106 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

any of the more liberal institutions or even to indulge in 
a discussion of liberal reforms, was ruthlessly stifled and 
blotted out at the hands of the very self-same govern- 
ments which in 1813, 1814, and 1815, in the name of the 
liberties of Europe, had led millions of European citi- 
zens against Napoleon. 

The cold truth is that the sovereigns were, in 18 13, 
even more afraid of the new spirit that had come over 
their own subjects than of Napoleon. The coalition of 
18 1 3 was really pointed against the very people that it 
was meant to " liberate " from the yoke of Napoleon. 
The sovereigns knew the new spirit created by the 
French Revolution was directly opposed to all their 
personal interests, that just as France could never again 
become what she had been under the old kings, even so 
the days of the absolutistic kings in Prussia, Germany, 
Austria, were destined to come to an end unless the 
sovereigns by an extreme effort succeeded in turning 
back the tide of history. 

This alone will explain the fact that in 18 13 was 
realized what had never been realized before in Europe, 
that is, a complete union and coalition of all the sover- 
eigns against one power. At various times in European 
history there had arisen a powerful ruler whose ambition 
was threatening to most of the other sovereigns ; such 
was the case with Charles V., with Louis XIV., and 
great coalitions were made against them. But those 
coalitions were never literally complete, and both Charles 
V. and Louis XIV. easily contrived to secure allies of 
their own and thus to break up the coalition. It was in 
18 1 3, and then alone, that practically and literally every 
single Christian country of Europe outside France united 



NAPOLEON. — IV 107 

with the rest in one huge coalition against Napoleon. 
With the solitary exception of little Saxony, every ruler 
in Europe joined Prussia, Russia, Austria, England, 
Sweden, etc., to combat Napoleon. 

If one pauses to think of the most essential and most 
patent character of Europe, that is, its irreconcilable 
differentiation (even now into forty odd sovereign and 
different states) ; if one considers that the interests of 
various powers in Europe are as a rule, and must for- 
ever be as conflicting, as diametrically opposed to one 
another as they have always proved themselves to be, so 
that a United States of Europe is as impossible as is a 
hereditary monarchy in the States of America: one 
cannot but stand amazed at the fact that for once in 
European history the Powers, forgetting their con- 
flicting interests, overlooking their irreconcilable dif- 
ferences, united into one immense coalition animated by 
one purpose, meant to accomplish one single great 
historic fact. This, on the one hand, undoubtedly sheds 
unparalleled lustre on the greatness of Napoleon, and it 
is evident that nothing short of a man of Napoleon's 
grandeur could have ever terrorized the European sov- 
ereigns into a union and coalition into which no pressure 
of events had ever been able to weld them before 
Napoleon. 

As was said in a former chapter, it was Napoleon who 
overreached himself, it was the French who deprived 
him of his French throne, but it was the united might 
of Europe that deprived him of his ascendency and 
power in the countries outside France. Had he moder- 
ated himself after 18 10, he might undoubtedly have died 
the Emperor of the French, even if he had abandoned 



108 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

his conquests east of the Rhine River. Had the French 
faithfully clung to him as they had clung to Louis XIV., 
he might have died Emperor of a diminished France, but 
still a French sovereign. It was the union of Europe 
that deprived him of his empire outside France, and 
finally brought him by way of the desertion of the 
French to his last plight. 

In studying the coalition of 1813, one cannot overlook 
that even then the interests of many sovereigns united 
against Napoleon were such as could be better advanced 
by alliance with the great French Emperor. Even 
Austria had perhaps stronger reasons to side with 
Napoleon than to join the mighty coalition against him; 
Napoleon himself knew that, and he could never fully 
believe in the possibility of a general coalition against 
him. Austria was more than threatened by Napoleon, 
but Napoleon's rule was after all a question of a man's 
life. The permanent antagonism to Austria was to be 
found not in the ruler of France but in Prussia. Had 
Austria followed her true political interests in 18 13, she 
could have, by the aid of Napoleon, secured a position 
of infinitely greater supremacy in Germany, or of 
stronger consolidation in her own hereditary provinces. 
She had very little or nothing to gain from the downfall 
of Napoleon ; Prince Metternich, however, was governed 
by one passion only, and that passion was vanity. He 
saw that in the circumstances of the year 18 13 his was 
the easy possibility of acquiring the glory of having de- 
feated Napoleon diplomatically, provided that he, Met- 
ternich, identified himself with the interests of Prussia 
and Russia. Austria's interests were evidently rather in 
favour of an alliance with Napoleon, and the decisive 



NAPOLEON. — IV IO9 

role in the diplomatic negotiations fell naturally to 
Metternich ; but Metternich, pursuing not the real inter- 
ests of Austria, which was only his adopted country, 
but the promptings of his own boundless vanity, identi- 
fied himself with Prussia and Russia and claimed to 
have brought Napoleon diplomatically to his downfall. 
The Czar of Russia pursued a far better policy : he, too, 
was prompted by the desire of revenging himself on 
Napoleon, of entering Napoleon's capital in triumph as 
Napoleon had entered his. But beneath this wild and 
blind desire for vengeance there was in Alexander a 
deep and cunning scheme in perfect harmony with the 
true interests of Russia, so that while Metternich was 
more adroit, a better negotiator, and subtler diplomatist, 
Alexander was both more cunning and more diplomatic. 
For Alexander contemplated entering Paris and defeat- 
ing Napoleon completely, not only to have his vengeance 
for Napoleon's campaign in Russia and Napoleon's 
frequent victories over Russian armies, but also and 
chiefly to play the role of the saviour of France, to 
attach the bulk of the French nation to the Czar of 
Russia, to restore France to her position as a great 
power in Europe, and thereby to acquire an additional 
and powerful leverage in the complicated game of Euro- 
pean politics. More particularly the Czar wanted to 
secure the French alliance in order to have a free hand 
in his oriental plans, with regard to which England and 
Austria, he very well knew, were his natural antagonists. 
The campaigns of the Czar in 18 13 and 18 14 were 
therefore based on natural sentiment and on justified 
principles of policy, The negotiations and the whole 
policy of Metternich, on the other hand, were based on 



110 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

personal vanity and had no historic basis in the past, 
and were therefore unable to lay down solid founda- 
tions for the future. 

The most solid, most consistent policy amongst the 
sovereigns was in 1813 adopted by Prussia. From her 
terrible downfall of 1806 onward, Prussia had constantly 
contemplated (or rather imported foreign statesmen were 
contemplating for Prussia) the restoration of the whole 
monarchy and the reparation of the immense loss in pres- 
tige and power which the unprecedented collapse of 1806 
had entailed upon her. Accordingly Prussia was deter- 
mined to join the alliance against Napoleon, to throw her- 
self body and soul into the new struggle against the man 
who had humiliated her beyond all expression. In that 
struggle Prussia might lose everything, and then she 
would have been blotted out from existence, or she 
might gain a rehabilitation, without which her power 
in Europe was impossible. It was therefore to Prussia 
a struggle for life or death ; for that reason alone Aus- 
tria ought not to have joined the alliance against Napo- 
leon. The enmity between Prussia and Austria was 
historical and natural, it was the bounden duty of Aus- 
trian statesmen to help Prussia under no circumstances. 
However, the Austrian Emperor was too incapable to 
see the right bearings of politics, and Metternich was 
too vain, and so the policy of Prussia, instead of being 
counteracted by Austria, and thus utterly defeated by 
Napoleon, was helped on all sides, and it was really 
from 18 1 3 to 181 5 that Prussia laid the foundations of 
her present greatness. 

England, although she promised help to the allies, and 
sent them subsidies in the shape of money, was partly 



NAPOLEON. — IV III 

engaged in Spain, partly in the United States, with 
which, chiefly through the subtle manoeuvres of Napo- 
leon, England had been at war since 1812 ; the immense 
campaigns therefore in 18 13 and 18 14, in which the mili- 
tary power of Napoleon was completely broken, were 
carried on without any participation of the English, 
except in the Basque corners of Spain and France. 

It has been necessary to take up these diplomatic con- 
siderations before entering on a short description of the 
campaigns of 18 13 and 18 14, in both of which the mili- 
tary genius of Napoleon shows with the greatest splen- 
dour, but in both of which he was finally worsted owing 
to superior numbers on the part of his antagonists, and 
to the treachery of his subordinates, more especially of 
the commander of Soissons. It would be indeed an 
untruth to say that in 181 3 the allies (the Prussians, the 
Russians, soon also the Austrians, the Swedes, and 
numerous smaller sovereigns) had always the absolute 
superiority in numbers; as a matter of fact Napoleon 
had, in addition to his army in 18 13, such an enormous 
number of soldiers, horses, artillery, and other ammuni- 
tion of war disseminated in his various strongholds and 
fortresses between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers, that 
had he united all his forces, both the garrisoned and the 
non-garrisoned, he could have for a long time disposed 
of superior armies in the field. For reasons, however, 
that can be put down to nothing but obstinacy or some 
other mysterious motive that escapes us, Napoleon, in- 
stead of availing himself of the vast number of soldiers 
garrisoned in his German fortresses, absolutely refused 
to draw upon them, and so quickly came into a position 
of numerical inferiority. 



112 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

It appears that Napoleon was convinced that the 
coalition would soon break up, that Austria or the 
minor German powers would again rally round him, 
and that he might therefore still continue to hold his 
own in Germany without drawing upon his numerous 
garrisons in German fortresses, so that we may say 
that Napoleon's military error in 1813 was caused by 
his false judgment of the diplomatic situation. The 
campaign itself, like all Napoleonic campaigns, is 
simple, and can be reduced to a few words. Napoleon 
having to deal with Sweden and Prussia on his left, 
with Prussia and Russia in front of him, and Russia 
and Austria at his right flank, naturally chose, as he 
had always done, a central position, where he might be 
enabled to prevent his antagonists from joining, and 
so crush them by superiority of numbers. His move- 
ments were so rapid, that when in May, 1813, he arrived 
from France in the neighbourhood of Leipsic, which 
was really the central position then as well as in the 
times of Gustavus Adolphus in 163 1, the allies had not 
yet joined, and had not yet been able to combine their 
forces. From Leipsic Napoleon advanced to Dresden. 
The King of Saxony, his faithful, if at times vacillating, 
ally, and the whole of the Elbe River in his possession, 
seemed to give him a military leverage great enough 
to combat his ever increasing opponents. As a matter 
of fact, advancing eastward of Dresden, Napoleon beat 
Bliicher repeatedly. Likewise, Napoleon marching 
southwards of Dresden defeated the Austrians most 
signally. However, Napoleon's left flank, commanded 
by Ney and Oudinot, met with a serious reverse at the 
hands of the Prussian general, Bulow, in the battle of 



NAPOLEON. — IV 113 

Dennewitz, so that Napoleon's left flank remained prac- 
tically undefended. One of the chief deficiencies of 
Napoleon's army in 1813 was his lack of cavalry, which 
prevented Napoleon from following up his victories, so 
that Blucher, in spite of repeated defeats at the hands 
of Napoleon, was always able to rally and to advance 
again ; the greatest defect, however, was, as already 
mentioned, Napoleon's obstinate refusal to call upon 
his reserves in his German fortresses. 

The peace negotiations made during that campaign, 
by which Napoleon hoped to retrieve his position dip- 
lomatically, proved to be a failure ; Metternich — whom 
Napoleon tried in turn to flatter, to intimidate, to brow- 
beat, and to persuade — only listened to his own per- 
sonal vanity, and glorying in the position of the central 
diplomatist of the time, he listened neither to the inter- 
ests of Austria, which he represented, nor to the argu- 
ments of Napoleon, which, as history has long proved, 
contained a very solid amount of truth. It is said that 
in those negotiations Napoleon uttered, amongst other 
phrases meant to intimidate Metternich, the terrible 
words, " What are a million lives to me ? " It is cus- 
tomary to quote that as a proof of Napoleon's diabolical 
nature. In reality, it was a mere phrase. When Na- 
poleon, after Waterloo, was offered the help of the 
anarchic element of France, he calmly refused it. 

As a matter of fact Napoleon was not at all cruel, 
and he used such phrases as mere political devices to 
make a point in negotiations ; he thought, and with 
great justice, that many of the members of the coali- 
tion ought, on maturer consideration, to come to the 
conclusion that their real interests were bound up rather 
1 



114 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

with him than with the coalition. It was certainly the 
case with Bavaria, with Saxony, with Wurtemberg, with 
Italy, and, as we have seen, with Austria. However, 
the vanity of the princes, their desire to stop the revo- 
lutionary spirit, and the power and influence of Metter- 
nich and Alexander, undid what, with regard for 
Napoleon's profound remark, ought to have been the 
right policy of several of the sovereigns; and all the 
negotiations failing, Napoleon was forced to stake his 
fortune on a gigantic battle which took place near Leipsic 
on three consecutive days in October, 1813. That battle, 
called the Battle of the Nations, in which the French 
army was confronted by the army of the allies, twice as 
numerous, ended in the defeat of Napoleon's army. 
Napoleon retreated into France, was on his way attacked 
at Hanau by a Bavarian army which he completely 
crushed, and the allies now decided to enter France and 
put a final stop to the rule of the great conqueror. 

The campaign of 18 14, fought between the Seine 
River and its right-hand affluents, is at once one of the 
most interesting military exploits of Napoleon, and one 
of the least important of his campaigns. Napoleon, 
placing himself in the middle of the allies, succeeded, 
by rapid movements, in defeating several of their gen- 
erals in pitched battles. These movements, the manner 
in which Napoleon utilized a relatively small army 
against enemies possessing a crushing superiority of 
numbers, have always been considered one of the great 
feats of modern warfare. However, circumstances, the 
whole political horizon, and the diplomatic conjuncture 
had changed so profoundly, that victories which in 1796 
or 1800 would have secured Napoleon's final triumph 



NAPOLEON. — IV 115 

over his enemies, were in 18 14 brilliant but barren 
successes. The student of military history can indeed 
never tire of studying those famous campaigns in 
which Napoleon's military genius, in the opinion of 
most authorities, shows even to a higher extent than 
in his former campaigns. As a matter of history, on 
the other hand, Napoleon's victories of Brienne, Mont- 
mirail, Craonne, Reims, St. Dizier, are of very little 
importance. For the allies had now learnt the great 
lesson, that Napoleon was definitely deserted by the 
French nation ; accordingly, the allies could afford to 
ignore him and his small army, although even then they 
were unable to crush him by a great military victory. 

In studying the marches of the allies, it is easy to 
note that the Austrians under Prince Schwarzenberg 
took a very southern route, evidently with the inten- 
tion of giving Napoleon time either to make a very 
great success or to negotiate with Austria as against the 
other allies. In 18 14, indeed, Austria had somewhat 
convinced herself, that her interest was not to abet the 
allies under all circumstances, and what Napoleon's 
diplomatic persuasion or power of intimidation had 
failed to do in 181 3, the force of circumstances had 
succeeded in bringing home to the Austrians in 18 14. 
But it was too late ; the allies, after indulging in sham 
negotiations at Chatillon-sur-Seine, clearly saw that 
Napoleon's power of aggression, as well as his great 
force of resistance on merely defensive lines, was over. 
They therefore determined to march on Paris, ignor- 
ing the presence of Napoleon at the head of 40,000 or 
50,000 men at Fontainebleau. In that, they were per- 
fectly justified by the attitude of the French nation. 



Il6 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Even then, it is true, Napoleon could count on the 
sympathies and the profound loyalty of large sections 
of the French nation ; however, a very powerful section 
of the rich bourgeoisie and the nobility had made up 
their minds to desert him. There was, both in the 
south of France, where Wellington had advanced as far 
as Toulouse, and in the northeast of France, where the 
allies were concentrating ever increasing hundreds of 
thousands of soldiers, much to intimidate, to frighten, 
and to discourage the population of France. Moreover, 
in the Parliament of France, both Talleyrand and 
Fouche were manoeuvring and intriguing against the 
Emperor. The strongest of all arguments, no doubt, 
was the fact that France had, ever since 1792, seen no 
foreign power within her precincts, and that the spectre 
of war in France acted upon the bourgeoisie with a 
power so great that even the prestige of Napoleon was 
unable to counteract it. 

To the observant student of French history it is 
quite evident that France (in that so similar to the 
physical structure of the country) consists of two 
diametrically opposed elements : one the steady, slow, 
methodic, and even pedantic, bourgeoisie proper, whose 
ideal is order, quiet, work, and present enjoyment of 
life ; the other, consisting of volcanic forces ever tend- 
ing to upheavals, revolutions, political and social erup- 
tions, instinct with boundless ambitions, and threatening 
the existence of old institutions. It so happened that 
in 1 8 14 the former, that is, the bourgeoisie element, was 
in the ascendency; to this Napoleon was forced to 
succumb, although in his relatively long reign, from 
1802 to 1 8 14, he had exhausted the vast resources of 



NAPOLEON. — IV 117 

his mind to devise measures and institutions by which 
huge classes and sections of France were to be solidly 
attached to him and to his dynasty ; yet he was unable 
to do it. What the slowest and most narrow-minded 
of the Bourbon or Valois monarchs had been able to 
do, the greatest of French rulers proved incapable of 
achieving. The French, as a nation, never revolted 
from sovereigns as insignificant as Henry II. or Louis 
XV., but they gladly, or at least with apparent light- 
ness of mind, deserted Napoleon I. The allies saw 
that, and on entering Paris they knew that Paris, that 
is, the majority of the Parisians, would gladly accept 
anything reasonable the allies meant to offer them, and 
would turn their backs on Napoleon. 

Napoleon was forced to abdicate ; he did so on 
behalf of his son. The allies, however, never meant 
Napoleon's son to ascend the throne of France, and 
the brother of Louis XVI., under the name of Louis 
XVIII., was put on the throne of France. Napoleon 
himself, under a strong escort, was permitted to live 
in the Isle of Elba, between Corsica and Italy, although 
even at that time Prince Metternich proposed that the 
great conqueror, in order to be efficiently shelved, 
ought to be sent to St. Helena. So ends the second 
period of Napoleon, and we see the mighty con- 
queror reduced to a trivial sovereignty in a small and 
insignificant island, deprived of all his influence, des- 
tined to pass the rest of his life in poverty. It is 
at this moment that we must consider the conduct 
and behaviour of most of the persons surrounding 
Napoleon : of his marshals, of his wife, of his servants, 
of his opponents, in order to obtain the right standard, 



Il8 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the right measure, with which to judge the political as 
well as the moral value of that extraordinary man. 
With exceedingly few exceptions, such as Macdonald, 
one of his marshals, every one of the men whom he 
had raised, frequently from the dust to social heights 
which they could have never seriously hoped to realize, 
behaved toward Napoleon with all the vile ingratitude 
of valets and flunkeys ; in speeches they reviled him, 
in actions they insulted him. True, all their ingratitude 
and degrading baseness of conduct is like mere child's 
play if compared to the conduct of that Habsburg 
princess who had the great honour of being his wife : 
she not only did not seriously want to join him, which 
she, moreover, was forbidden to do, but she forgot 
both her religious oaths and conjugal faithfulness to 
him, and threw herself away upon a miserable Aus- 
trian soldier, who was to Napoleon what an insect is 
to an eagle. Ney, Soult, and all the other marshals 
and generals vied with one another in insulting the 
great Emperor and taking the oaths of fealty to the 
Bourbon who again sat on the throne of the French 
kingdom. Louis XVIII. was a heavy, limited, stupid, 
and uninteresting person ; none of the current phrases 
in history has more truth in it than the famous saying 
about the Bourbons, that they have never learnt any- 
thing and never forgotten anything. During the weari- 
some years of his exile, he as well as his brother and 
other princes of his House, instead of learning the 
moral of events, instead of really understanding the 
new drift of French history, had learnt nothing, had 
seen nothing. He came back to the throne of France 
the same hopelessly conceited Bourbon that his brother 



NAPOLEON.— IV II9 

Louis XVI. and their grandfather Louis XV. had been. 
The policy the Bourbon government attempted was so 
far from being anything like in harmony with the 
political or social attitude of the French nation, that a 
few months after the accession of Louis the discontent 
in the country was general. 

It is part and parcel of the ordinary mind that it 
cannot believe or really construct any of those great 
changes that from time to time have been coming 
over the nations of Europe. Europe is Greater Hellas 
not only in respect of its immense differentiation and 
individualization, but more especially in its intense love 
of profound changes in structure. Europe is not sta- 
tionary ; it has never been stationary. The Americans 
think that of all nations they are the most rapidly 
changing, the most progressive, the most dynamic. As 
a matter of fact, no close observer and student of 
American history can fail to notice that all the so- 
called changes in America are formal, external, and 
do not really touch upon the vitals of the nation. It is 
quite different in Europe. In Europe alone there have 
been real revolutions, such as the great moral and intel- 
lectual revolution of the sixteenth century called the 
Reformation and the Renaissance ; the great French 
Revolution; the great Revolution of 1848. They have 
changed in Europe not only the forms of government 
but the very structure of its classes and its society. 
Of this remarkable power of profound change France, 
of all European countries, has the greatest share. In 
no other country can we notice the clear and broad 
fact that the nation made a perfectly clean sweep of all 
its social and political institutions ; in no other country 



120 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

can we trace changes so profound, so absolute, as in 
France. The greatest of those changes happened 
through the French Revolution. It was a Revolution 
totally unlike the great Revolution of the Dutch from 
1565 to 1609; or the Revolution of the English from 
1642 to 1660; or the Revolution of the Americans 
from 1775 to 1783. In none of the three Revolutions 
were the social, that is the deepest, elements of the 
nation ever touched upon; all the three referred to 
purely political issues, leaving the rest of the nation's 
organization untouched. The French Revolution on 
the other hand was a revolution proper, that is an 
alteration of the very organs, social, religious, moral, 
and political, of the entire nation. 

Yet the Bourbons did not see it. It is well known 
that most people after forty are absolutely unable to 
take in any novel idea or to conform to new habits. 
The Bourbons are a glaring example of that homely 
truth; they failed to see that the French nation, al- 
though largely opposed to the excessive ambition of 
Napoleon, were not meant to be satisfied with the sub- 
ordinate ungracious policy of the Bourbons. The dis- 
content in the country was constantly spreading, and 
Napoleon in Elba, closely following the events, pre- 
dicted, with that supreme clearness of mind so char- 
acteristic of him, that he would reenter France and 
regain his throne without striking a single blow. This 
is precisely what he did. Early in March, 18 15, he 
landed at Port Jouan, and by Grenoble, Lyons, he 
marched at the head of a few faithful soldiers on Paris 
without striking a blow. His old marshals that were 
now sent against him with orders to capture him, Ney 



NAPOLEON. — IV 121 

in the first place, had no sooner beheld that Imperial 
figure and face that had led them to so many immortal 
victories, than they forgot their formal duty, and in- 
stead of laying hands on him as a prisoner, they went 
down on their knees before him, offering him their 
lives. And so Napoleon entered Paris at the head of 
the whole of the French army, received by the people 
who a few months ago had deserted him, with the 
most jubilant enthusiasm. The Bourbon fled, and thus 
began the third and shortest period of Napoleon's life, 
the so-called " Hundred Days." 

Napoleon, totally unlike the Bourbon, had learnt the 
lesson that the French people would not accept absolu- 
tistic rule even at his hands. Accordingly he promised 
them constitutional government, and there is little doubt 
that he meant to act up to his promise. He had there- 
fore little if nothing to fear from those staunch Re- 
publicans in France that even in the times of his most 
glorious victories had opposed his reign. At home he 
was thus in a pretty safe condition. It was, however, 
different abroad. The Great Powers of Europe had 
since October, 1814, met at Vienna in the famous 
Congress that was to rearrange the map of Europe, 
and the dictates of which, as a matter of fact, changed 
the whole political aspect of Europe for several genera- 
tions after the fall of Napoleon. The Great Powers on 
hearing of the new and unexpected turn of events in 
France at once made up their minds to repeat what 
they had succeeded in doing in 181 3 and 18 14, that 
is, to humiliate, to annihilate Napoleon, who to them 
was not only the reminder and cause of their greatest 
humiliations, but also and more particularly the great 



122 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

obstacle to their attempts and intentions to suppress all 
political liberty in Europe. Napoleon at once, by vari- 
ous declarations to the Courts of Europe, in which he 
most solemnly declared himself to have no intentions of 
reviving his past, attempted to conjure away the coming 
storm. However, the Powers, by their victories in 1813 
and 1 8 14, had taken heart and were convinced that by 
a new coalition they could not fail to defeat Napoleon 
ultimately and definitely. England, Prussia, Austria, 
Russia, in fact the whole of Europe again united to 
hurl over a million soldiers against France, and to rid 
the absolutistic sovereigns of their great nightmare, 
and the liberties of Europe of their possible protector. 
This is how the campaign of 181 5 was brought about. 
This memorable campaign has been written up by all 
the nations that had a part in it, and its literature is un- 
doubtedly far more interesting, and filled with more 
falsehoods and distortions of facts, than that of any 
other campaign in European history. The contradic- 
tions in the various reports of the three days of the 
Waterloo campaign from June 16th to June 18th, 181 5, 
are so great that no ingenuity and no research can ever 
hope to reconcile them. To give a few examples : — In 
the Battle of Waterloo the Anglo-Dutch centre was at 
La Haie Sainte. Wellington himself says that the 
French occupied La Haie Sainte at two o'clock in the 
afternoon; Major Baring, on the other hand, who com- 
manded the post, declares that he held his own on that 
post until six o'clock in the evening. Other witnesses 
give other hours. Or: — The great charges of the 
French cavalry directed against the French centre of the 
Anglo-Dutch army were, the French reporters say, sue- 



NAPOLEON. — IV 123 

cessful in breaking the English squares. The English 
say the French never broke it. The French say that 
entire British battalions were annihilated ; the British 
say not a single battalion was annihilated, and so on in 
infinitum,. 

Under these circumstances it is certainly almost im- 
possible to hope for a correct and faithful description of 
the tactical details of the campaign of Waterloo ; fortu- 
nately for us the great labours, both of French, English, 
Dutch, and German historians, enable us to see with ab- 
solute clearness the strategic details of that famous cam- 
paign. It is quite natural that the English, who in 
their fights from 1793 to 18 15 had, with few exceptions, 
not been able to worst the French armies on land, and 
had on the other hand suffered in innumerable engage- 
ments, at the hands of the French, signal and most an- 
noying defeats ; it is quite natural, we say, that the 
English have always tried to make the best of the cam- 
paign of Waterloo. Although at the beginning, that is, 
from 181 5 to 1830, a series of British generals, more 
especially Lord Vivian, who commanded the all-impor- 
tant left wing of Wellington's army, freely confessed to 
the fact that the Anglo-Dutch army could not have 
seriously thought of defeating Napoleon without the 
help of the Prussians, yet in times after 1830 the legend 
of the British victory at Waterloo was sedulously spread 
and steadily advertised until it seemed an absurdity to 
deny it. It is, as already remarked, a common feature 
of all small nations to exaggerate their victories over 
powerful nations, and all the victories of the English 
over the Scotch have never been able to efface the glory 
of Bannockburn, as all the victories of the French over 



124 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the English will never suffice to obliterate the triumph 
of Crecy and Agincourt ; so with the Boer victories of 
Colenso, Magersfontein, etc. However, the campaign 
of Waterloo has features of such serious importance 
that while the historian may good-naturedly tolerate the 
hymns of praise lavished on the heroes of Crecy or Ban- 
nockburn, he cannot afford to leave the historical truth 
with regard to Waterloo in the hands of national adver- 
tisers. For the first truth about Waterloo is this : — 
Napoleon was a dead man before he began the cam- 
paign. He had in the two former years, in 1813 and 
1 8 14, been not only defeated in open battle, but had 
been deprived of nearly all his army, of his prestige, and 
worst of all of the allegiance of his own nation, and it 
is therefore absolutely certain that Napoleon, even by a 
possible victory at Waterloo, could never have retrieved 
his position. A few more considerations will make 
that absolutely clear. Let us suppose that Napoleon 
on June 18th had succeeded in dispersing Wellington's 
army, as two days before he had succeeded in scatter- 
ing the army of Blucher at Ligny, then he would have 
been at the head of — in the best case — 50,000 men, 
while the allies marching against him already on the 
Rhine were at the head of over 800,000 men. In other 
words, a victory of Waterloo on the part of Napoleon 
would have been absolutely identical with Napoleon's 
victory in 1814 at Montmirail or at Craonne ; the allies, 
feeling that they had the immense majority in num- 
bers, would have done in 181 5 what they actually did 
do in 1 8 14: they would have ignored Napoleon; they 
would have marched on Paris ; they would have forced 
Napoleon to abdicate the second and the last time. 



NAPOLEON. — IV 125 

Nobody knew that better than Napoleon. He, whose 
master mind controlled details as well as general fea- 
tures, had lost all faith in his star. It was not true 
that he was ill, but it is true that judging the situation 
as it really was, he lost heart, knowing well as he did 
that no victory over Bliicher or over Wellington could 
really save him. The researches of Houssaye have, it 
must be added, contributed one noteworthy feature to 
our final judgment about that campaign. It appears 
that Napoleon might have raised a new army of about 
800,000 men in October, 18 15. Everything therefore 
depended on whether Napoleon was able to hold out 
until October, when the new recruits might be ready, 
or whether he was forced to surrender before October. 
In so far, then, as the battle of Waterloo ruined the 
prestige of Napoleon, gave such of the French as were 
against him the upper hand in the French Parliament, 
and deprived him of any chance of waiting until Octo- 
ber ; in so far, and in so far alone, the battle of Water- 
loo may be considered the final defeat of Napoleon. 
For it cannot be seriously doubted that Napoleon at the 
head of 800,000 men (although most of them would 
have been raw recruits) might have held his own against 
the allies. Waterloo deprived him of that possibility, 
and in that sense alone Waterloo was of greater effi- 
ciency and is of greater importance than Leipsic. 

The general outline of the Waterloo campaign is 
simple : it consists of two double battles, one, the 
battle of Quatre-Bras and Ligny on 16th June, 181 5; 
the other, the double battle of Waterloo and Wavre, 
on 1 8th June, 181 5. In the first double battle Wel- 
lington was at Quatre-Bras, Bliicher at Ligny ; the 



126 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

two battle places were quite close to one another, 
and everything depended on Wellington helping 
Bliicher. Until half-past six in the afternoon of the 
16th June, 1815, Wellington was opposed by a French 
army, under Ney, more numerous than his own ; after 
half-past six he received succour and was stronger 
than the French army. Bliicher expected him then 
to repulse Ney and to march on Bliicher's right wing, 
strengthen the Prussian army, and help her defeat 
Napoleon at Ligny. Wellington repulsed Ney after 
half-past six, but he did not go to the help of Bliicher. 
It is unknown why Wellington did not help Bliicher. 
Bliicher's army held its own against Napoleon at Ligny, 
but in the evening Bliicher's centre was broken in, 
whereupon his two wings also yielded, although Napo- 
leon's army was considerably smaller than Bliicher's. 
Bliicher took to flight and marched on Wavre, Napo- 
leon sent after him Grouchy with 30,000 ; Grouchy 
mistook the direction of Bliicher's flight and went on 
the old Roman road far too far eastward. The selec- 
tion of Grouchy in that important manoeuvre was a 
great mistake of Napoleon's, for, as Thiebault has 
shown us in his memoirs, Grouchy had always been 
an unreliable character and a poor general. On the 
other hand, Napoleon himself acted against all the 
principles of the "art" he had preached all his life, 
for instead of marching on Wellington with the greatest 
rapidity and annihilating him near Quatre-Bras, where 
Napoleon arrived with far greater numbers than Wel- 
lington disposed of, Napoleon, on June 17th, moved 
with inconceivable slowness and so gave Wellington 
a chance of escaping. Wellington retreated and con- 



NAPOLEON. — IV 127 

centrated in front of Waterloo ; Napoleon, in the even- 
ing of the 17th June, encamped opposite Wellington 
at Belle Alliance. On the 18th June, the tactical and 
strategical position was an absolute repetition of that 
of the 1 6th June : Bliicher was at Wavre opposed 
by Grouchy ; Wellington was at Waterloo opposed by 
Napoleon ; everything depended on whether Bliicher 
would join Wellington or Grouchy would join Napo- 
leon. Already at eleven o'clock in the morning, before 
the battle of Waterloo began, there were 9000 men 
under the Prussian general, Billow, near the Anglo- 
German army, at Chapelle St. Lombard; and in the 
course of the afternoon Blucher's army arrived by in- 
stalments, so that at seven o'clock Napoleon, who had 
meanwhile succeeded in breaking in the Anglo-German 
centre at La Haie Sainte, found himself attacked by 
the Prussians in his right wing and in his rear, while 
the Anglo-German army was in his front; Grouchy 
never moved from Wavre. The result was the com- 
plete defeat of Napoleon at the hands of Bliicher and 
Wellington. 

The rest was a repetition, in that Napoleon was 
forced to abdicate the second and last time ; he volun- 
tarily surrendered to the captain of the English ship 
"Bellerophon," and was then, at the advice of all the 
Powers, sent to St. Helena, where, after five years' 
captivity, he died on the 5th May, 1821. Each of the 
great Powers had a separate agent at St. Helena to 
convince himself of the presence of Napoleon in the 
lonely island, and over 4000 soldiers were watching 
the great conqueror. Escape was impossible. That 
was the end of Napoleon I. 



VIII 



THE REACTION 



THE fall of Napoleon, which the Russian, Prussian, 
and Austrian monarchs had chiefly brought about, 
gave those rulers free scope to carry out the real ideas 
and plans that had filled them ever since the outbreak 
of the French Revolution. As already remarked, their 
opposition to Napoleon had been caused chiefly by 
their desire to utilize the Napoleonic wars as a means 
of depriving the nations of the Continent of all their 
political liberty. To that purpose they assembled at 
Vienna (autumn, 1814), determined to rearrange de- 
finitively the map of Europe and the institutions of 
the nations on the lines of the most uncompromising 
absolutism, thereby to undo forever the work of the 
greatest revolution of modern times. They very well 
knew that France, now again a monarchy, could not, 
and that England would not, lend herself to a simi- 
lar wholesale slaughter and destruction of all the 
great ideas of liberty and constitutional law, which the 
thinkers and heroes of the eighteenth century had 
spread and confirmed in the minds of the people. 
The scheme of Metternich and Alexander was from 
the very outset to shelve France, or, at any rate, to 
paralyze her diplomatic influence at the Congress of 
Vienna. Prussia, too, was bent not only on restoring 
her ancient territory, on continuing her old established 

128 



THE REACTION 1 29 

autocracy, but also on having her full revenge on the 
French and on the Saxons, the most faithful of the 
allies of Napoleon. The representatives of Prussia at 
Vienna were Hardenberg and Wilhelm von Humboldt. 
The latter, in his writings and private correspondence, 
was a most delicately attuned instrument for sweet 
words and noble thoughts. In his diplomatic activity, 
however, he agreeably surprised the potentates with a 
character so ruthlessly materialistic, so brutally high- 
handed, that he naturally formed the centre of that 
Prussian group which was determined to browbeat 
France at the Congress, and to annihilate Saxony. 
Humboldt, who in his " Letters to a Female Friend " 
(Briefe an eine Freundin) had shown remarkable ca- 
pacity for the tenderest expressions of those ideals 
of which Schiller, the great German poet, had re- 
peatedly given such sonorous expression ; Humboldt, 
with genuine Prussian brutality, told Talleyrand, the 
representative of France : " Might is Right, we do 
not recognize the law of nations to which you have 
appealed." 

However, Talleyrand, who had behind him a most 
varied experience in all the intricacies of European 
diplomacy, was more than a match for either Hum- 
boldt, Alexander of Russia, or Metternich. With great 
dignity and still greater cleverness he obtained, by 
playing off the counter interests of the Powers one 
against the other, a decision of the Congress that the 
smaller Powers, both in and out of Germany, should vote 
in the Congress as much as the great Powers. The 
interests indeed of the great Powers were clashing at 
more than one point. Now that Napoleon was re- 



130 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

moved forever from the scenes of his unparalleled 
achievements, the Powers had no more common cause 
to unite them in a sincerely common plan. For Prus- 
sia wanted the whole of Saxony, pleading that Saxony 
had been treacherous to Germany and merited an- 
nihilation. This, on the other hand, Austria could 
not possibly admit. For such an immense aggrandize- 
ment of Prussia would make her unduly powerful, and 
so render the inevitable conflict with Austria for su- 
premacy in Germany more imminent, and more dan- 
gerous. Alexander wanted to keep not only his old 
share of Poland but secure a larger portion of it. This 
was, again, against the interests both of Prussia and 
Austria. On the other hand, the smaller Powers of 
Germany, such as Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, Hesse, 
were siding with Saxony against Prussia, apprehend- 
ing, as they did, that the threatened fate of Saxony 
might strike them too. 

Austria again, or rather Metternich, desired to have 
all the strings both of international and of German 
politics in his hands, to dominate the Congress, and to 
play the diplomatic Napoleon to the rest of the Powers. 
He was what the French very well call (and what is, 
alas ! a too frequent feature of Austrian statesmen) a 
Jinassier, 3. man who thought that he could easily out- 
wit anybody, and in order to give himself the pleasure 
of doing so, Metternich often created artificial posi- 
tions which only defeated his own ends. As a matter 
of fact, Talleyrand was the master of the Congress ; 
he prevailed in the end on the assembled representa- 
tives to assert publicly the principle of legitimacy ; a 
principle that he rightly thought would do more for 



THE REACTION 131 

the ultimate pacification of the princes at any rate 
than could any other diplomatic device. The principle 
was simple. Only those princes were to retain or to 
obtain territory whose claims were based on legitimate 
lines of inheritance or monarchic traditions. The rep- 
resentatives of England clearly felt that although 
England had combated France for the twenty-three 
preceding years, it was now in her interest to go with 
France; and by detaching England from the great 
Powers, Talleyrand easily became the acknowledged 
if not the desired umpire of the Congress. Metternich 
amused his guests with an unending series of festivals, 
balls, concerts, so that the Congress was called the 
dancing Congress. It was one of his most cherished 
self-flatteries that the surest way of duping others was 
to bewilder them with pleasures, the intoxication of 
which, Metternich believed, could do harm only to 
others, but not to the august serenity of his own su- 
perior mind. The amusements at Vienna were certainly 
most charming. However, the victory lay with Talley- 
rand. 

The result of the Congress was as follows : — In 
Germany, Saxony alone was deprived of over one- 
half of its territory in favour of Prussia. The other 
smaller Powers, especially Bavaria, that had played 
a double game with remarkable cleverness during 
Napoleon's triumphs and after his downfall, were left 
more or less in possession of the territories which 
Napoleon had given them in 1805 and 1806. The 
whole of the " German Confederation " was given a 
Diet, and so, if in a feeble form, the Holy Roman 
Empire was partially revived. That Diet, however, 



132 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

was a mere farce, and all the real power in the 
German Confederation lay between Prussia and Aus- 
tria, or, considering the feebleness of the Prussian 
ministers, in the hands of Metternich. Italy became 
largely Austrian; the Polish question was solved in 
favour of Alexander, although Cracow was estab- 
lished as a republic and given neither to Russia nor 
to Austria. 

The worst feature of the Congress, however, was the 
unwritten part of its legislation. As in so many other 
measures of high-strung politics, the unwritten, the 
latent, the implied portions were the most important. 
The Congress introduced that terrible system of reac- 
tion, of obscurantism, of police persecution, that made 
the period from 1815 to 1848 one filled with the most 
shameful outrages against the liberty of the people. 
The nations of Europe felt that they had been most 
egregiously duped by the monarchs. They had been 
given to understand in 18 13, 1 8 14, and 18 15 that they 
were destroying the great oppressor of European 
liberties, Napoleon. They now speedily learnt that 
the so-called oppression of Napoleon continued after 
his removal worse than ever, without any of the re- 
deeming features of the great Emperor's genius. The 
slightest attempt on the part of any man in Germany 
or Italy or Austria to discuss questions of politics, to 
sing the Marseillaise, to publish a political poem, to 
establish the most inoffensive social club, to wear a 
round hat, in one word, to do anything that the stupid 
and reactionary instruments of monarchical police might 
possibly take offence at, was visited with prison, with 
enormous fines, with the most degrading searching of 



THE REACTION 1 33 

houses, in short, with every possible mode of tantalizing 
citizens short of executing them. Metternich in his 
boundless vanity — which, alas, the successes of so 
many years did apparently fully justify — actually 
thought that he could hoodwink all the liberal aspira- 
tions of the nations, and dupe or browbeat all their 
attempts at restoring a more popular government. Sin- 
gle excesses on the part of the people were cleverly 
utilized by him to obtain more and more general ap- 
proval of his system. When, in 18 19, one Charles 
Sand, a student, assassinated the famous Kotzebue, the 
writer of irresistibly comic comedies, but at the same 
time a miserable spy of the Russian government, Met- 
ternich knew how to avail himself of that misdeed to 
work upon the imagination of all the great and minor 
sovereigns, and more and more stringent police measures 
became the order of the day. The prisons of Austria, 
especially the Spielberg, near Briinn, in Moravia, and 
the Kuf stein in Tyrol, were rapidly filling with prisoners 
doomed to years of captivity, some of them, like Kossuth 
or the Italian Silvio Pellico, men of the highest order of 
intellect and of the noblest patriotism. 

In fact, the political intellect of the Germans, the 
Austrians, and the Italians was locked up in prisons ; 
the sun of liberty, as the German poet has well said, 
was screened off by hanging the hoods of monks and 
priests over it; and Metternich and his police were 
reigning supreme over a sullen and desperate people of 
over 50,000,000 souls. 

The political history of those countries, then, is re- 
duced to the story of a few measures made by the 
monarchs and their ministers, the people having no 



134 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

voice in these deliberations. The measures alluded to 
were chiefly splendid congresses which were held in 
succession at Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), at Karlsbad (18 19), 
at Troppau in Austrian Silesia (1820), at Laibach (1821), 
and at Verona (in 1822). 

One of the most brilliant of French conversationalists, 
Chamfort, once remarked that real history is only to be 
found with free nations, and that the history of absolu- 
tistic governments consists of mere anecdotes. The 
remark of the famous French wit is largely true, and 
applies with great force to the period now under con- 
templation. 

The congresses in question were proceeding on vari- 
ous lines and cross lines, and a full statement of each of 
the ambitions and aspirations of the diplomatic repre- 
sentatives and of the monarchs would indeed present a 
most amazing and confusing picture of apparently very 
important but confused events. However, as is gen- 
erally the case in absolutistic countries, the apparent 
complication easily yields to the knife of honest state- 
ment. The various lines, aims, and objects at the above 
congresses were practically reduced to three main 
policies. Alexander of Russia, with otherwise laudable 
persistency, tried either to engage or to dupe the rest of 
Europe so as to have a free hand in his oriental policy. 
Like all other Russian rulers, his heart was set on Con- 
stantinople. It is more than doubtful whether the pos- 
session of Constantinople will in future prove more 
effective, more really commanding, than it has so far 
either in the hands of the Byzantine emperors or of the 
Turks. There may be very much exaggeration in the 
value attached to Constantinople. Yet as a matter of 



THE REACTION 1 35 

practical politics it is certain that the Czars have always 
desired that town as the third of their capitals, which in 
addition to holy Moscow and to commercial and modern 
St. Petersburg, would add the imperial capital of so 
many Greek emperors and Turkish sultans. Alexan- 
der hoped to persuade Europe in 1818 to launch on an 
immense enterprise in America. Since 18 10, as we have 
seen, the colonists in Latin America were in open, if 
not always successful, revolt from Spain. Alexander 
now convened the congress at Aix-la-Chapelle in 18 18, 
with a view to persuading the Powers to send combined 
and huge European armies to the help of the Spanish 
king and for the suppression of the revolutions in Latin 
America. Alexander had long secured the imperial 
friendship of France by helping France to get rid of 
the army of occupation which the allies had left there 
in 181 5. He therefore hoped that France would not se- 
riously counteract his schemes. However, Metternich, 
who, both from personal pride and from reasons of 
policy, wanted to baffle the plan of Alexander, contrived 
to render the whole scheme futile and academic. Alex- 
ander thus left Aix-la-Chapelle without having realized 
his cunning device of engaging Europe in America, and 
the triumph of Metternich was complete. Alexander's 
policy was several times renewed by him and by Capo- 
distrias, his chief minister, but with the exception of the 
Greek troubles it was generally thwarted by Metternich's 
superior cunning and diplomacy. 

The second great line of political aims at the above 
congresses, and one which all the monarchs were readily 
accepting, was the determined suppression of any at- 
tempt at establishing popular liberty, whether in Spain, 



136 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

in Italy, Austria, or Germany. Wherever the people, 
long tired of the obsolete system of reactionary abso- 
lutists, raised their voice in favour of some progress or 
amelioration of their lot, there Metternich, Alexander, 
and all their confederates at once employed all the 
rigours of police measures for the coercion and suppres- 
sion of the " rebellious spirit." In Italy those rebellions 
were either local upheavals, as in Naples, Milan, and 
Rome, or they were carried on all through the Peninsula 
in the form of secret societies, such as the famous Car- 
bonari. All these risings and rebellions were put down 
with a ruthless hand by Metternich and the Austrian 
army, so that, for instance, in Naples the people con- 
tinued to be under the most wretched, most stupid, and 
most unpardonable of petty tyrants, Ferdinand IV. It 
was the same thing in Spain, where the people had 
learnt with bitterness that they had driven out the 
greatest of modern rulers in order to fall back under 
the insupportable and cruel rule of the most wicked and 
most insipid of the Spanish Bourbon kings, Ferdinand 
VII. The Spanish had fought Napoleon and his army 
for six years, only to find that the Inquisition, the su- 
premacy of the clergy in every walk of life, the lack of 
all commercial enterprise, the constant spread of poverty, 
in short, all the obsolete features which Napoleon's 
legislation had swept away, or was certain to remove, 
were now again reestablished. Patriotic Spain combated 
Napoleon, as we have seen, moved by a wrong motive. 
The result was that patriotic Spain sealed the fate of its 
own decadence to the present day. The very French 
whom they had combated for six years were enabled in 
1823 to march through the Peninsula to the Trocadero 



THE REACTION 1 37 

of Cadiz, and to put down the liberties of the nation for 
the sake of that very Ferdinand VII. for whom the 
Spanish had bled by their hundreds of thousands a few 
years previously. 

In Austria and Germany the gagging of the Press, 
the imprisonment of anybody who ventured to utter 
a word for liberal institutions, the curtailing of all the 
possible rights of the Diet, in one word, the introduc- 
tion of the most absolutistic regime, was scarcely inter- 
rupted by a little rising here and there. With each 
successive congress more and more severe measures 
were proclaimed by Alexander and his colleagues for 
the radical extinction of liberals. The so-called Holy 
Alliance, or mystico-political treaty, that Alexander 
made with a few Continental Powers, in which his 
reactionary views were clothed in a religious garb, 
was in reality partly superfluous and partly inefficient. 
The reactionary spirit of the Holy Alliance was prac- 
tised well enough by Metternich without any religious 
garb, and the people in Germany have never been 
able to make a real revolution. The people in Italy 
were likewise unable to join in an open revolution, and 
thus both nations rendered Metternich's absolutism 
possible, and in the opinion of very many, even desir- 
able. The student of the works of the great philosopher 
Schopenhauer cannot but be amazed when he reads 
in the writings of that undoubtedly profound thinker, 
that the period of reaction following after Waterloo 
was the wisest, the best, the most praiseworthy attempt 
on the part of paternal government for the benefit of 
people who had been enticed into imitating the " most 
absurd " and most criminal act of modern times : the 



138 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

French Revolution. Schopenhauer only expresses the 
views of thousands and hundreds of thousands of Con- 
tinentals for whom politics is a terra incognita, and 
who imagine that any form of government that secures 
peace, tranquillity, and order is infinitely preferable to a 
government under which disorder at home, war abroad, 
and blunders everywhere are rife. This quietistic ideal 
of a state has no doubt great charms for invalids, incur- 
ables, millionaires, and monks. However, the world, in 
addition to these worthy people, consists of an enor- 
mous number of men and women desirous of change, of 
advancement, of stir, of progress. Nor can it be doubt- 
ful that errors and blunders, disorders and wars, are the 
price that one must pay for the temporary blessings 
of honourable peace. The ideal of Metternich, of 
Alexander, of Schopenhauer, spells decadence, stag- 
nation, death. There is no general system of politics 
fitting forever the needs, the wishes, the ideals of 
nations. The reaction under Metternich in the nine- 
teenth century has done Germany more harm than 
did the Thirty Years' War in the seventeenth century, 
though under Metternich only a few hundred people 
were executed and no great battles at all were fought. 
The system of Metternich paralyzed and has to the 
present day crippled the people of Austria. It has, 
moreover, so impoverished the political vitality of the 
Italians, and so sorely beggared their resourcefulness 
in the fights for national ideals, that although they 
are now united, they are so, thanks not to their own 
forces or efforts, but owing to the magnanimous if ill- 
advised help of the French. There are few great min- 
isters in the history of Europe who have in their lives 



THE REACTION 1 39 

done more harm to the people than has the fatuous 
leader of Austrian policy from 181 5 to 1848. For, 
with the exception of the Greeks and to a large extent 
the French, no nation in Europe then was able to shake 
off the torpor, the hypnotic condition of idleness and 
indifference, of dreaminess and morbid sentimentality, 
that Metternich and his colleagues were able to infuse 
into the peoples of Europe. If the historian had the 
powers of the ancient witch-finders and inquisitorial 
judges, he would not hesitate to say that Metternich 
bewitched Europe. He was a demon of twilight as Na- 
poleon was a hero of light. Even the blunders of Na- 
poleon were blunders of a genius, in whom was embodied 
and by whom were represented many of the real historic 
tendencies of Europe. While triumphant, Napoleon 
did incalculable good through his institutions to the na- 
tions he conquered ; by his defeat he gave them an un- 
precedented chance of recovering liberties that they had 
long been weaned from. However, so inferior were all 
the nations to that one unparalleled man that after his 
downfall they were unable to utilize their opportunities, 
and sank into the state of Helots under a man immeasur- 
ably inferior to the imperial Corsican. 

In spite of Metternich's antagonism to any attempt 
at liberation, more particularly on the part of the Hel- 
lenes, these descendants of the noblest and greatest 
people of all history had already in the second decade 
of the nineteenth century concluded to rise against the 
Turks, their rulers. As is well known, the Greek 
descent of the modern Hellenes has been questioned 
in elaborate and very learned works, such as that of 
Fallmerayer, and much ingenuity has been spent in 



140 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

proving or disproving the pure or mixed origin of the 
modern Greeks. We venture to say that the pure or 
mixed condition of Greek blood is a supremely indiffer- 
ent matter to the student of modern Greek history. No 
nation has pure blood, no nation has one racial element 
alone, and what constitutes a nation is not the blood 
but the mental attitude of every one of its members 
towards the fundamental questions of the country. If 
the Greeks actually believed, as believe they did, that 
they were the descendants of the victors of Marathon 
and Salamis, then for all historic and practical purposes 
they may be considered to be Hellenes; just as any 
man is an Englishman who in his heart of hearts really 
means to live in and for England, and eventually to die 
for her. On the other hand, it is equally doubtful 
whether the Turks really so misgoverned the Greeks 
as to drive the latter into despair. The Turks are a 
noble race ; they are indeed what Bismarck long since 
called them, "the only gentlemen of the Orient." In 
any case where the Turks are under the shadow of an 
accusation of cruelty or tyranny, the serious student 
would do well to suspend his judgment until more accu- 
rate sifting of the facts. 

However that may be, the Hellenes had made up 
their minds to liberate themselves, both on the Con- 
tinent of Greece and in the Greek islands, and with the 
most reckless disregard for life they fought the trained 
and terrible armies of Mahmud II., the Turkish Sultan, 
with the courage of despair and the success of men 
actuated by the highest ideals. True, with their revolt 
from the Turks they started also civil troubles amongst 
themselves, and many an act of infamous treachery and 



THE REACTION 141 

most revolting cruelty was perpetrated by Greek on 
Greek. Their success in the Greek seas was so great 
that the Sultan finally was forced to ask for help from 
Mehmed Ali, his governor of Egypt, who sent his son 
Ibrahim with a considerable fleet to Greece. So far 
the Powers had been paralyzed by mutual fears and 
jealousies. England had not extended a friendly hand 
to the Greeks, fearing that the ultimate profit from the 
Greek revolution would accrue to Russia. In France 
there was then, in 1824, a most reactionary king, 
Charles X. ; and Metternich, chiefly from jealousy of 
Russia, was so opposed to the whole Greek adventure 
that he naturally did everything in his power to thwart 
the influence of the European concert upon the issue 
of the Greek revolution. Finally, however, the Powers 
united and agreed to send a fleet to the help of the 
Greeks. This was done chiefly because latterly the 
Turks had, in retaliation of Greek excesses, committed 
acts of the most harrowing cruelty and destruction, 
such as the wholesale massacre of the inhabitants of 
the island of Chios in 1822. The outcry in Europe was 
universal ; the Philhellenes, the most famous of whom 
was Lord Byron, collected money, armies, volunteers, to 
help the cause of the descendants of those great Greeks 
whose works were then studied more than ever, and 
whose art had finally begun to be appreciated as the 
highest manifestation of the human mind. In 1827 at 
last the fleets of Russia, England, and France went into 
Greek waters, met the Turkish fleet in the harbor of 
Navarino, and completely destroyed it. The Czar Nich- 
olas sent an army into the Balkan, contrived, although 
with great difficulty, to advance on the Turkish capital, 



142 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

and so finally, in the treaty of Adrianople (1829), the 
Sultan acknowledged the independence of the Greeks. 
The great reaction sweeping over Europe after the 
fall of Napoleon sterilized political life to such an ex- 
tent, that, with the exception of the revolutionary events 
mentioned in the preceding chapter, nothing of real 
political importance occurred in Europe. The most 
remarkable feature of that reaction was, however, the 
intellectual movement of Europe, which, too, was a 
reaction strikingly and profoundly different from all 
the former movements in literature, art, and poetry. 
For such is the Hellenic nature of Europe that all great 
political events have at all times had their intellectual 
and artistic counterparts. In oriental countries kings 
and dynasties come and go ; battles and campaigns are 
won and lost ; material changes of all kinds are made ; 
but the social and intellectual life of the people scarcely 
undergoes any alteration. Not so in Europe. From 
all the political reforms and revolutions that have hap- 
pened in Europe since the times of the Crusades, a real 
historian might easily deduce or infer the drift of litera- 
ture, art, philosophy, and even science. It is thus quite 
clear that the immense change of politics all over Eu- 
rope, the cessation of all wars and of all the gigantic 
struggles on sea and on land that had engaged the forces 
and enthusiasm of Europe from 1789 to 181 5, necessa- 
rily brought about a change in the mental and emotional 
life of Europeans. This great change or Reaction in 
Literature and Art, or as it is more commonly called, 
this romanticism, was weighing upon the minds of all 
Europeans until the outbreak of the great revolutions 
of 1 848- 1 849. 



THE REACTION 1 43 

In the preceding period the literary life of the Ger- 
mans, the Austrians, the English, the French, and of 
most of the other nations of Europe had been proceed- 
ing on lines of classicism. It is difficult to put into a 
few words the nature of classical poetry or literature. 
Yet it is perfectly clear that classical literature aims at 
complete harmony between Form and Matter ; at any 
rate the great models of the Greeks and Romans excel 
in that very harmony, and it appears in the classical 
works of the Germans, such as the Laokoon of Lessing, 
and his dramas, Emilia Galotti, Nathan the Wise, 
Minna von Barnhelm. In the immortal works of Schil- 
ler and Goethe we are struck with the beauty of form 
corresponding to the soundness of the matter. If, on 
the other hand, we consider the works and the writers 
who dominated European literature and art after the 
fall of Napoleon, we are chiefly struck with the re- 
markable phenomenon of great beauty of form joined 
to morbidness and unsoundness of matter. All roman- 
tic writers, whether of England, France, Germany, or 
Italy, excel in beauty of form. Their style, whether in 
prose or in poetry, is a distinct advance upon the style 
of the classical writers. Nothing could be more perfect 
than the prose style of Heine, the great German poet ; 
and the prose style of some of the great French roman- 
tics, such as Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Prosper Meri- 
mde, and others is chiselled and sculptured to an extent 
far superior to anything that had preceded them. It 
is even so in poetry. The power of the romantics, 
whether in versification or in blank verse and rhyme, 
reveals a richness of linguistic resource such as we sel- 
dom meet with in the works of the classical writers. 



144 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Lord Byron in England surprised, it may now be said, 
the greatest students of the English language with the 
incredible resourcefulness of his versification. In Heine 
the German language was adorned with a grace and 
light elegance such as the most sanguine admirer of that 
language could have scarcely hoped for. In Lamartine's 
Elegies and Meditations the French language revealed 
a mellowness and cadence such as the poets of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had never reached. 
But if we look at the matter used by these romantic 
poets, we have to draw an entirely different picture. 
For it may be said that all of them, nearly at all times 
and in all their works, selected morbid subjects, or at 
any rate such as appear to us now strange and unwhole- 
some. Goethe used to say that everything classical is 
sound, and everything romantic is ill and diseased. 
The Jupiter of German literature, in this as in so many 
other of his sayings, strikes at the very essence of the 
whole question. In the poets of the romantic period 
we find, before everything else, strange and unwhole- 
some ideas of the position and power of Woman. The 
familiar figures of the poetry of Lord Byron, of Lamar- 
tine, Heine, and Leopardi, the great Italian poet, are 
creatures of a morbid fancy. They do not appeal to 
man's vigorous senses and normal mind ; they are not 
meant to be worthy mothers or heroic spouses. They 
float in obscure midair, surrounded by a halo of moon- 
lit romantic nights. They partake more of the nature 
of fairies and demons than of human beings. They 
derange the mind and the heart of man instead of filling 
it with the holy enthusiasm of love. Not one of those 
familiar figures created by the romantic poets has had 



THE REACTION 145 

a firm hold on the imagination of mankind. The classi- 
cal writers created their Emilias, Margarets, Ophelias, 
and Juliets ; the romantic writers created only shadows. 
A curious sidelight is thrown on the nature of these 
female figures from the private life of these romantic 
poets. While in their poems they celebrated in tones 
of admiration the charms of women utterly unknown to 
reality, they selected as their loves in real life women of 
the most material, most sensual nature. Heine, whose 
familiar figures in his poems are ethereal, airy, demoniac, 
transmundane, in reality attached himself in profound 
and uncompromising passion to the most material, most 
earthly creature that ever captivated the fancy of a 
lover. So too Lamartine, so too Leopardi, and so too 
Lord Byron. This circumstance alone shows that the 
female figures of these romantic poets were all unreal ; 
that into the poems in which they celebrated them, the 
poets put not their real heart, but the affectation of 
heart and love. It is thus certain that in all these love- 
poems of the romantic poets there is a false ring, there 
is a permanent affectation of sentiment in which the 
poets themselves do not believe. 

If we now turn to music, we find the identical phe- 
nomenon. After a long period of strictly classical 
music we find after the downfall of Napoleon a period 
of romantic music radically different from anything 
that had preceded it. It is possible to express that 
great change in technical terms of music. Classical 
music moves in the diatonic scale ; romantic music 
leaves the diatonic scale as much as possible and moves 
almost entirely in the chromatic scale. Romantic music 
created, as may be seen, an entirely new world. Though 

L 



146 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

romantic music, as well as romantic literature, is largely 
unwholesome, self-conscious, and lacks abandon, yet, on 
the whole, of all the romantic intellectual movements, 
the romantic music is by far the most successful. The 
two great exponents of romantic music at this time were 
Robert Schumann and Frederick Chopin. It cannot be 
denied that both of them sounded chords and made 
vibrate strings of the human lyre such as had never 
been brought into sound by even the greatest composers 
before them. Schumann descends into depths for which 
we look in vain in the works of Bach or Beetohven. 
The profound passion, the mysteriousness of his Etudes 
Symphoniqnes, his G Minor Sonata for the Piano, the 
exultant joy of his B Flat Major Symphony, stand un- 
equalled to the present day. Although Schumann's 
compositions are a musical continuation of the literary 
works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, they are yet a world by 
themselves, and have been equalled by nothing since 
the death of their incomparable composer. 

Chopin is probably the most original artist that 
ever lived. Much to the detriment of his fame he 
has published, with few exceptions, only works of a 
small compass. Moreover, he called them mazurkas, 
waltzes, and polonaises, and thus gave his innumerable 
enemies an easy means of falling foul of such " dance 
music." As a matter of fact, Chopin's music is of the 
most legitimate character. The author of the present 
work can testify from experience that on all his 
travels, from California to Roumania, and from North 
Germany to the Southern states of America, he has 
heard no music played more often, admired more 
heartily, and appealing to the emotions of men and 



THE REACTION 1 47 

women more strongly than that of the unfortunate 
Pole. If one considers the extreme simplicity of the 
means employed by Chopin for the expression of some 
of our most complicated and deepest emotions ; if, for in- 
stance, one studies his B Minor Mazurka or his Valses, 
chiefly with regard to the number of tones and rhythms 
and voices he employs, one cannot but stand amazed at 
the immense power that he is able to instil into tone- 
figures of the simplest kind and into tone structures 
of an almost primitive description. Whether he is 
joyous or deeply melancholy ; whether striving under 
the dark waves of fierce passions or soaring into the 
ether of heroic resignation, his beauty of form and 
perfect expressiveness of tone are unequalled. Al- 
though as self-conscious as Mozart was nai've, he yet 
stands nearer to Mozart than any one else. Of his 
greater works his E Minor Concerto is by far the 
most precious, the most perfect, of all piano concertos. 
Chopin was able to express in music dreams and fancies 
that neither poetry nor art can ever reach. In him we 
hear all the soul's ill, all the griefs of down-trodden 
Poland, all the nervousness of a heart wrung by an 
unhappy passion, all the deep discontent of an artistic 
temper with a world hurting it at all points, a world 
discordant and prosaic. Chopin, who died in his for- 
tieth year, had long before fallen in love with Madame 
Georges Sand, whose " xth affair " he was. Of this 
woman, of whom the less said the better, he was fond, 
passionately fond, and it was no doubt that unfortunate 
love, which Madame Sand had neither the means nor 
the will to reciprocate as it deserved, that broke Chopin's 
heart and health. As in the case of Heine, one stands 



148 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

amazed at the fact that Chopin, whose mind was con- 
stantly brooding over ideals high and far off from any 
commonplace human beings, could have felt a passion 
so deep and so intense for a woman so materialistic, in 
spite of all the idealism in her novels, and so sensuous. 
As in the case of Heine, the life of the composer was 
utterly diverse from his life as an individual, and that 
complete severance between Chopin the author and 
Chopin the man told very strongly on Chopin's work. 

If we now turn to another department of European 
intellectual life, to Philosophy, we find the same remark- 
able phenomenon of romanticism. The philosophy 
which, shortly after the downfall of Napoleon, captivated 
and fascinated the mind of the Continent was Hegelian- 
ism. Hegel, Professor of Philosophy at Berlin, had, in 
a series of works, and still more by his lectures, pro- 
pounded what certainly is the most startling system of 
philosophy ever proposed by a single man in modern 
times. There have been philosophers like Berkeley, 
Spinoza, Kant, and others^ who have given to inquisitive 
humanity replies to some of the great problems agitating 
the human mind. Spinoza readily gives answers to the 
eternal questions about the relations of God to the 
world ; about the fundamental principles of politics and 
of private ethics ; but he leaves us alone and helpless 
whenever we ask him for solutions of the likewise eternal 
problems of art, of history, and religion. Other philos- 
ophers, again, give us hints as to an adequate attitude 
towards the great questions of religion and art, but 
leave us helpless and resourceless with regard to politics, 
to science, to ethics. Hegel alone of all modern thinkers 
has attempted to give us solutions to nearly all the prob- 



THE REACTION 1 49 

lems of religion, science, art, ethics, and metaphysics. 
It cannot be denied even by his greatest adversary that 
over his works are strewn in myriads of gems, small 
and great, a large number of insights, the suggestive- 
ness and fertility of which are undoubtedly very consid- 
erable. Whether one accepts or rejects his system, it 
remains certain that in his works, now long obsolete in 
Germany, but extensively taken up both in England 
and America, there is a mine of thought and ideas that 
we do not find in any other thinkers of modern times. 

Apart from the ideas of Hegel's system it is historically 
certain that he stands on a line with the poets and com- 
posers mentioned above, in that he, too, is thoroughly 
romantic. In his system, too, form is very much more 
finished than matter, so that his logic, as he himself 
thought, is the best portion of his system. In Hegel, 
too, as in the other romantic writers, there is that super- 
abundance of subjectiveness which is so characteristic a 
symptom of the romantic mind, in contrast to the objec- 
tive temper of the classical mind. It would be a great 
historical error to trace Hegel's immense influence in 
Germany during his lifetime to the fact that Minister Al- 
tenstein countenanced and encouraged Hegel. Hegel's 
triumph was caused by the perfect sympathy that ex- 
isted between his system and the intellectual temper of 
the time. 

An overstrained subjectivism may be considered as 
the chief mental feature of the time. A philosophical 
system such as Hegel's was the very system most pleas- 
ing and in harmony with the trend of the continental in- 
tellect. Hegel attempts to build up the whole universe 
from the inside, from ideas, by means of a dialectic pro- 



150 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

cess which, he says, is productive of real truth, both in 
mental and natural philosophy. Nothing could be more 
certain of appealing to the minds of men who turned 
all their attention to the internal mysteries of the human 
soul, and who were, in real life, in scientific research or 
in art, brooding over the enigmas of the human heart 
and of the human fate. When we try to find out the 
causes of this strange romanticism, we must confess that 
the whole period is still too near to us to admit of seeing 
all its workings in their due proportions. One cannot, 
on the one hand, deny that romanticism has produced 
results of an abiding and valuable character. It is cer- 
tain that our reformed and better views of the middle 
ages, which by the writers of the eighteenth century had 
been condemned and ridiculed wholesale, are owing to 
the interest taken by the romanticists in everything 
mediaeval. No doubt they exaggerated it in the novels 
and historical works written by them on the middle ages, 
and they tried to throw an illegitimate glamour and halo 
over the crude, and, in many ways, barbarous times of 
the mediaeval period. Yet, on the other hand, the ro- 
manticists opened up entirely new avenues of thought 
about the mediaeval growth of modern idioms. Men 
like Jacob Grimm revealed to the world the immense 
treasures of mediaeval and early modern Germanic lan- 
guage. Even the greatest feat of modern linguistics, 
the discovery of the near affinity of the Indo-German 
stock of languages, was mostly due to the enthusiasm 
with which the romanticists studied language in all its 
branches. They dream of entering a word of a language 
as one enters a small boat and let themselves glide down 
the waves of the past in this small craft to the origins of 



THE REACTION 151 

things and thoughts. That dream of theirs has done 
much evil both to history and philosophy. Words re- 
veal much, but they are in the position of pale photo- 
graphs, and not coloured and living pictures of things. 
The inf uence of the romanticists in history, too, was 
very considerable ; the interest taken by them in periods 
previous to the French Revolution gave rise to the es- 
tablishment of historical schools, such as the Ecole des 
Chartes in Paris, and similar institutions in Germany. 
The pupils and teachers of these institutions have, since 
1830, so indefinitely increased our inf ormation about the 
middle ages and early modern times, that the most 
brilliant and learned works published before the French 
Revolution on these periods (such as Gibbon's Decline 
or Robertson's Charles V.) now appear obsolete and 
past. Nay, it must be added that even in science proper 
the mystical pantheism of many of the romanticists has 
contributed very considerably to a deeper and more com- 
prehensive insight into the workshop of Nature. 

It is difficult to decide whether the balance of 
good things over bad produced by the romanticists is in 
favour of abiding results. What seems probable is that 
the whole immense reaction after the downfall of Napo- 
leon was caused in the first place by the political circum- 
stances of the time. The immense effort made both by 
the French and all the other nations of Europe after the 
gigantic struggles from 1792-18 15, had practically ex- 
hausted their energy for active manly life, and they re- 
verted from active to contemplative life. The political 
ideals so enthusiastically taken up by the greater part 
of Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century; 
the energy of idealistic methods pervading the lower 



152 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

classes of Europeans in the beginning of the nineteenth 
century — all that had given place to a mental collapse. 
People were disgusted with the few and miserable results 
achieved by them. Very few of the ideals fought for 
had been realized ; hundreds of thousands of families 
had been ruined ; and the downfall of the greatest figure 
of the time, and the man who really incarnated the whole 
revolution, impressed every single person in Europe 
with suspicion and with despair with regard to all the 
high-flown aims that had been the chief cause of the in- 
credible rise of Napoleon. Both in the literature of the 
time and from the conversations of men whose fathers 
or grandfathers had lived during the period, one can 
easily gather the despondent melancholy filling the 
hearts of nearly all the continental people. After the 
immense and strenuous efforts of the revolutionary gen- 
eration, it was but too natural that a generation should 
follow whose minds were diseased, morbid, excessively 
sensitive, unfit for the realities of life. 

Yet among the mental heroes of that period we find 
one who, while he underwent much of the influence of 
the period, yet soared so high above it that his works 
will for all time remain the great expression, not only 
of one limited period, but of the history of modern 
humanity in general. We mean Balzac. 

It is one of the strangest phenomena in the intel- 
lectual life of the British, Germans, and French, that 
none of them was able to recognize the surpassing great- 
ness of some of their most extraordinary geniuses. 
In England, Shakespeare's unparalleled greatness re- 
mained unknown and unvalued for over one hundred 
years after his death ; in Germany, the Titanic genius 



THE REACTION 1 53 

of Bach was practically unknown for over seventy 
years after his death ; the French have to the present 
day not quite learned to appreciate the true dimen- 
sions ot the vast genius of Balzac. They praise Balzac 
as the English praised Shakespeare in the seventeenth 
century; they consider him a clever writer, a great 
writer, an interesting writer; they fail to see that he 
is infinitely more than all that, that he is not great 
but unique. His Comedie Humaine is a greater ex- 
pression of modern Europe than is the divine comedy 
of Dante of Europe in the thirteenth century. The 
very form of Dante's work commands respect and 
authority ; whereas the form of Balzac's works — novels 
— is in itself most unlikely to command respect and fill 
the reader with awe. Balzac is not the inventor of a 
genre ; he is the creator of types of humanity as im- 
mortal, as replete with individual life, as are the types 
of Shakespeare and some of the types created by the 
anonymous genius of peoples, such as Faust, Don 
Juan, The Wandering Jew t etc. His types of men and 
women are in reality more lifelike and have more 
vitality in them than any actual living man or woman 
can possibly have. His Pere Goriot is like Shake- 
speare's King Lear, an immortal type of the paternal 
feeling; his Grande t is the classical expression of the 
great defect of most French bourgeois, of Avarice. In 
his works we find types of all classes, of all occupa- 
tions. During twenty years he worked as no galley- 
slave ever laboured, writing and re-writing, correcting 
and re-correcting his novels, constantly intent upon 
his great aim, that is, to depict humanity. Napoleon's 
aim was to govern men ; Balzac's to analyze them. 



154 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Napoleon has created State institutions that no change 
of events can materially alter ; Balzac has created 
types of individualities, types of the institutions of 
the soul and heart, as it were, that no future events 
can destroy. Balzac captivates both the fancy and 
the intellect, and in him there is as much powerful im- 
agination as there is subtle analysis. He is the prose- 
Shakespeare of France. 

Even in this cursory description of the period of 
Reaction we cannot leave unmentioned the most fa- 
mous and the most extraordinary executive artist of 
all times, Franz Liszt. It is well known that as a 
pianist he has never had his equal, and when we now 
read about the triumphs that his art won for him from 
Cadiz to Moscow and from the Caucasus to London ; 
when we hear of the incredible enthusiasm devoted to 
a man who was apparently only a pianist; when we 
hear of universities offering him their Doctor degrees ; 
innumerable towns making him their honorary citizen ; 
countless women prostrating themselves before him, 
nay, eventually kidnapping him ; we are, according to 
our modern tearless materialism, prone to think that 
whatever Liszt's genius was, his hearers and enthu- 
siasts were probably decadent or subject to a lack 
of restraint unknown to our modern self-conscious- 
ness. On the other hand, it is quite certain that Liszt's 
execution was animated by a soul, the manifestation 
of which on the piano must have appealed with im- 
mense power to the broadest, mightiest, and most noble 
sentiments of the Europeans. The author of the pres- 
ent work can testify from personal experience that the 
unique fascination of Liszt over all classes of men, 



THE REACTION 1 55 

cultured and uncultured, was the same in the seventies 
and eighties of the last century as it had been in the 
thirties and forties, when Liszt far distanced the tri- 
umphs obtained by the famous violinist, Paganini. As 
a matter of fact, Liszt was not a pianist only, he was a 
great poet. He wrote his poems with his fingers on the 
keyboard. It was real poetry. 



IX 



THE REVOLUTIONS 

IT had long been foreseen, for instance by Metter- 
nich's famous secretary, Gentz, that the Reaction 
and apparent submission of all nations to the abso- 
lutistic government of the monarchs was not to be of 
long duration. The various revolutionary upheavals 
in Italy, Spain, Portugal^ France, and Germany had 
been, as we have seen, suppressed before 1848. In the 
previous chapter we have not touched upon the great 
revolution of 1830 in France, reserving a short state- 
ment about that famous event in connection with the 
various revolutions which in the end broke the power 
of absolutism. The July revolution of 1830 in France 
was in itself an event of small dimensions ; it can in 
no way compare with the tragic events of the French 
Revolution. In one respect alone it will stand com- 
parison with the greatest event of French history, and 
that is, that its effects upon the minds of Europeans 
were, if not as deep and lasting, at any rate memo- 
rable, more particularly in England, Poland, and Bel- 
gium. The revolution in France had long been prepared 
by the dissatisfaction among the French nation, and 
it was brought to a head by the stupid obstinacy of 
Charles X., who, rather successful in foreign policy (in 
Algiers, in Turkey, etc.), easily persuaded himself that 
by suppressing the liberty of the Press he might re- 

156 



THE REVOLUTIONS 1 57 

store the ancien regime. The liberty of the Press is in 
France what the habeas corpus act and the jury system 
are in England, and it has at all times played a far 
more incisive role in France than in England. In 
England there have been well-organized Parliamen- 
tary parties since the time of Charles II., who died in 
1685;, and politics have in England always proceeded 
on party lines, and have therefore given much less 
consideration to the academic expression of political 
opinions whether by great intellects or by the common 
people. In France, on the other hand, the real political 
parties of historical life have never existed. In Eng- 
land the liberty of the Press was in William Ill's time 
granted in a negative fashion ; that is, the proposal to 
renew the licensing laws of the Press in Stuart times 
was simply shelved. In France, on the other hand, 
the liberty of the Press was given to the nation in the 
most explicit and positive form, and was always cher- 
ished by them as the greatest treasure of their political 
liberty. 

Charles X., a narrow, stale, and pedantic man, mis- 
read the whole political character of his people, and 
issued in July, 1830, ordinances, that is, laws on his 
own personal authority, practically destroying the 
liberty of the Press. The people of Paris instantly 
rose, the army practically joined them ; Charles at the 
last moment wanted to make concessions ; in the end 
he had to flee. The French now established the Orleans 
dynasty, and Louis-Philippe, son of " Egalite'" as his 
father was called in the French Revolution, was made 
King of France. As will be seen from the foregoing 
sketch, the revolution of 1830 was, on the whole, of a 



158 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

rather academic character. A change of persons is not 
a change of institutions. Yet its effect upon the rest 
of Europe was immense. It is well known that it was 
the fear of a similar revolution in England that finally 
prevailed upon the Tories to yield the famous Reform 
Bill of 1832. In Belgium the people rose, and so 
violently clamoured for separation from Holland that 
in the end Belgium was established as a separate and 
independent kingdom, and this it has remained to the 
present day. In Poland the unfortunate people, taking 
courage from events in Paris, rose in a formidable 
revolution against Russia, hoping to be succoured by 
the French. They fought bravely, and defeated the 
Russians in various battles. In 1832, however, they 
were forced to surrender, and the Iron Czar, Nicholas I., 
deprived them of all the autonomy granted them by 
Alexander I., his predecessor, and placed them on a 
level with every other province of the Russian Empire. 
The new King of France, Louis-Philippe, was ex- 
pected by many of his friends and admirers to read 
the character of. his people and of his time far better 
than had been done either by Louis XVIII. or by 
Charles X. As a matter of fact the new King affected 
an affability, a bourgeois modesty, that won him many 
a heart, and seemed to promise well for the future of 
France. However, as we now know, beneath that sur- 
face of kindliness and simplicity there was the old 
spirit of his race, tempered by the desire to do by 
France what Charles II. had done by England. 
Charles II., as every one knows, secured to himself all 
the rights his father had fought for, by means of a 
dissimulation which his father had been too haughty 



THE REVOLUTIONS 1 59 

to employ. In the same way Louis-Philippe attempted 
to secure the essence of power while sacrificing some 
of its apparent forms. He repeatedly yielded, whether 
to his haughty minister Casimir-Perier, to the staunch 
Guizot, or to the astonishingly clever and adroit 
Thiers. He bowed before many a popular storm, and 
in 1840 went so far as to consent to the repatriation of 
the ashes of Napoleon from St. Helena. Amidst ex- 
traordinary solemnities the remains of the great states- 
man and conqueror were placed in a magnificent tomb 
in the Hotel des Invalides in Paris. Even the con- 
spiracy made by Napoleon's nephew Louis, subse- 
quently Napoleon III., was visited with the relatively 
mild punishment of imprisonment in the fortress of 
Ham. In the various conflicts of France with England 
over the oriental question ; in the difficult diplomatic 
negotiations between Russia, Austria, and France, 
Louis-Philippe tried to temporize and to tide over dif- 
ficulties by patience and dissimulation. The material 
prosperity of France under Louis-Philippe was very 
considerable ; in fact, with the exception of England, 
and probably on a par with England, the French were 
the richest nation in the world. In point of science 
they made considerable progress, and it was then 
practically acknowledged that the study of mathe- 
matics, natural philosophy, and biological science in 
France was a model for the rest of the nations of 
Europe. 

However, the mind of the French nation was against 
Louis-Philippe, as it had been against Charles X. The 
feeling against him grew, and in their numerous at- 
tempts on the life of the King and of other members 



160 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

of the Royal Family it became quite manifest that the 
French, so long the leading nation in Europe, could 
not and would not brook their fall from former great- 
ness under a clever but spiritless king. Already in 
former lectures we indicated that the French, like 
every really great historical nation, cannot possibly 
give up the dream of greatness, although at times 
both their statesmen and thinkers plead for peaceful 
and unaggressive development. When the French saw 
that Louis-Philippe was no more able than Charles X. 
to restore them to their former position in European 
politics; that their exploits were now practically re- 
duced to the slow and difficult conquest of Algiers; 
when they learned from experience that their magnan- 
imous dream of Liberty was realized no more under 
Louis-Philippe than under the last two Bourbon kings, 
they made up their minds to put an end to a regime 
which they neither loved nor feared. At that time 
two men, neither of whom was a great statesman nor 
a man of action inspired by some great historical ini- 
tiative, Ledru-Rollin and the poet Lamartine, both 
conscientiously aided by Cavaignac, precipitated a revo- 
lution against Louis-Philippe in February, 1848, which 
was very adroitly utilized by Louis Napoleon. Louis- 
Philippe, like his predecessor, was driven from France, 
and Louis Napoleon became President of the French 
Republic. Like the Revolution of 1830, so that of 
1848, in itself devoid of any very startling events or 
of any great convulsions of national life, proved to be 
of the utmost importance to the political life of nations 
other than the French, for no sooner had the news of 
the February revolution in Paris reached Austria-Hun- 



THE REVOLUTIONS l6l 

gary, Italy, and South Germany, than all these countries 
rose in the most formidable revolutions they have ever 
started in modern times against their rulers. Of these 
revolutions in 1848 the most important and also the 
most interesting was the Hungarian revolution. The 
importance and interest of the revolution in Hungary 
is owing to two clear causes : First, the fact that the 
revolution in that country was not only a change of 
political but also of social institutions. It was the re- 
generation of an entire nation. While in Germany and 
Italy the revolutions at that time barely touched upon 
the social structure of the nations, in Hungary it rev- 
olutionized the whole body politic in all its aspects. 
The second reason for the superior interest of the 
Hungarian revolution is owing to the fact that Hun- 
gary, of all the countries then engaged in great political 
upheavals, was able to produce the most striking and 
historically important personalities, such as Louis Kos- 
suth, Petbfi the great poet, Count Szechenyi, General 
Bern, a Pole, and many others. As at the present day 
everybody knows, Kossuth represented, not certain in- 
dividual or temporary aims, but an immense historical 
tendency. At present, several years after his death, 
his son, in no way equal or even similar to his great 
father, is able to lead the whole Magyar nation owing 
to the mere fact that he is the son and natural repre- 
sentative of his father. Kossuth was indeed from many 
a standpoint an extraordinary man. In foreign coun- 
tries his eloquence has been admired even more than in 
Hungary. In Hungary every peasant is eloquent ; but 
amongst a naturally eloquent nation he was the most 
eloquent. His power of word and persuasion was in- 



1 62 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

deed quite unprecedented. Gifted with a beautiful and 
thrilling voice and a most majestic presence, he knew 
how to play on the sentiments and emotions of his 
hearers with a facility, with a natural force and fluency, 
such as in those agitated times produced marvels of 
enthusiasm. It is doubtful whether he was a great 
statesman, for although it cannot be denied that the 
historical tendency which he tried to embody is one 
of the abiding features of the Hungarian polity, so that 
in point of principle he is and probably always will 
be the incarnation of one of the fundamental ideas of 
the Magyars, we may yet say that while his political 
strategy, irrespective of time, was great, as a political 
tactician he lacked too many qualities. Probably it 
will be found that his fame will broaden in future 
centuries, and yet the historian of his time cannot place 
him on a line with the less profound but more efficient 
statesman of the great Magyar revolution. Hungary 
had, ever since 1825, undergone a social and political 
evolution that in its way has no parallel in the rest of 
Europe. The reform of the ancien regime in other 
countries came either from above in the form of royal 
degrees conferring the boon on a passive people ; or it 
was brought about by most violent struggles, termi- 
nating as a rule in civil war. In Hungary the regen- 
eration of the nation was brought about practically 
without civil war, and assisted by the magnanimous 
and patriotic initiative taken by the noblemen them- 
selves. Previously to 1848 the noblemen paid no taxes 
and were altogether exempt. Under the leadership, 
however, of the greatest of " Magyars," Count Stephen 
Szechenyi, the Hungarians in various diets, from 1825 



THE REVOLUTIONS 1 63 

to 1848, held at Pozsony (Pressburg), carried out reform 
after reform until even before the revolution broke out 
the noblemen had voluntarily placed themselves on a 
level with all the other citizens of the country, and 
every single citizen in Hungary was ready to go to 
any length of sacrifice for the amelioration and the re- 
generation of his country. The reigning Emperor of 
Austria, Ferdinand, was an imbecile. He was quite un- 
der the influence of his wife and her court circle, and she 
thought that by hounding on the Croatians under Jel- 
lachich against the Hungarians, she would easily bring 
the unruly spirits of the Magyars to book without mak- 
ing any concessions. But the Magyars had no sooner 
learnt of the advance of the Croations than they broke 
into open revolution all over the country. Every single 
Hungarian, whether a civilian or a monk, whether man 
or woman, youth or old man, joined directly or indi- 
rectly the army. Money was forthcoming from all sides, 
battles were speedily won, and in less than a year the 
Austrians were driven completely out of Hungary, owing 
chiefly to the resource and genius of General Gorgei. 
The victory was complete, an independent Magyar gov- 
ernment was established, and Kossuth was made the 
Governor of Hungary. In her predicament Austria 
now applied for help to Russia. Czar Nicholas, ever 
ready to suppress liberal movements, sent General Pas- 
kievitch at the head of a little over one hundred thousand 
men into Hungary, and although even the Russians were 
repeatedly worsted by the Hungarians, yet shortly 
after the Russian invasion the Hungarians lost heart, 
and Gorgei surrendered with the only remaining regular 
army of the Hungarians at Vilagos in 1849. So ended 



1 64 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the Hungarian revolution. The Austrians now intro- 
duced political institutions intended to do away with 
the last vestige of Hungarian freedom and autonomy. 
A wholesale process of Germanization was introduced, 
and Minister Bach and his so-called Bach-Hussars at- 
tempted to stifle the spirit of the nation that had for 
nearly a thousand years maintained its political inde- 
pendence and individuality. It is almost superfluous 
to say that Bach failed. The passive resistance mani- 
fested by the Hungarians from 1849 to l86 ° was of 
such unconquerable force that even the young Emperor, 
the present Emperor-King Francis Joseph, convinced 
himself that the system was false, and so in i860 va- 
rious tentative proposals were made to bring about a 
better understanding between Hungary and Austria. 

The revolution in Austria was shorter because the 
Austrian people, especially the German-speaking per- 
sons in Austria, have at no time realized the value or 
ideal of political liberty, and were, therefore, unfit 
to carry on a consistent struggle. The revolution in 
Austrian Italy was quickly suppressed by Austrian 
generals, of whom Haynau made himself notorious for 
his inhuman cruelty and General Radetzky for his dash. 

On the whole, therefore, the revolutions in Austria 
and Austrian Italy were a failure. In Austria proper 
that failure was never improved, and to the present 
day Cis-Leithania has not yet reached the level of 
well-balanced bodies-politic. In Hungary and Italy 
the failure was, as we shall see, only temporary, 
for both very soon afterwards secured perfect unity, 
independence, and prosperity. 

As the period of Reaction had produced an intel- 



THE REVOLUTIONS 165 

lectual reaction or romanticism in every department 
of literature, philosophy, and art, so the revolutionary 
period rapidly introduced an era of intellectual revolu- 
tion into all the spheres of science and literature. 
We saw that the keynote of the intellectual world 
during the period of reaction had been Hegelianism 
in philosophy and romanticism in literature and art. 
With the advent of the great revolutions in 1848- 
1849, both the intellectual movements of the Reaction 
were fast disappearing, and the period of positivism 
was introduced. The enthusiasm for Hegel and the 
romanticists had been intense and general. The reac- 
tion against them after 1848 was equally vast and in- 
tense. Before the revolutions Hegel seemed to satisfy 
the deepest desires of the human mind, and in France 
as well as in the German-speaking countries he was 
looked upon as the prophet of a new and perfect 
knowledge. Now, when the reaction against this 
system came, he was speedily handed over to igno- 
minious oblivion. For a number of years after Hegel's 
death in 1831 his name created an authority so great 
that some of the most vital problems of theology, law, 
politics, and literature were considered to be definitely 
solved by a reference to one of the Master's guiding 
ideas. David Strauss reconstructed or rather destroyed 
the life of Jesus on Hegelian principles ; Stahl and 
others renewed the status of law on the basis of 
theories formulated by Hegel ; the political science of 
the thirties and forties of the last century was almost 
exclusively dominated by the system and thoughts of He- 
gel. All this now disappeared. What Schopenhauer, 
in writings at that time scarcely read, had advanced 



1 66 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

in tones of unparalleled sarcasm against the value of 
Hegel's philosophy — in fact, against all philosophy 
except his own — was now beginning to be the opinion 
of the entire world. Philosophy was discarded, tabooed, 
and despised ; and its place was taken by the positive 
sciences. Already during the height of the reactionary 
period France, as we have seen, had been cultivating 
the positive sciences so successfully that the rest of 
Europe flocked to Paris for instruction in Astronomy, 
Physics, Biology, and the other natural sciences. It 
was in the forties and fifties that a great Frenchman 
not only summarized the chief teachings of the exact 
sciences, but drew from them a system of philosophy 
meant to supplant all previous systems, and to impress 
the human mind with the spirit of an entirely new prin- 
ciple. That Frenchman was Auguste Comte. 

A disciple of St. Simon, from whom he had taken 
many an idea and mental attitude ; a mathematician by 
profession, and by his life and mental caliber purport- 
ing to be the prophet of a new world of thought ; Comte 
in his Coins de Philosophie Positive (6 vols.), outlined 
what he took to be the coming mental revolution and 
new religious system. He called his philosophy the 
positive philosophy in sharp contradistinction from the 
existing systems, but denied that the human mind will 
ever be able to grasp metaphysical problems. Accord- 
ing to him all that the human mind can do is to coordi- 
nate the most general truths of the principal sciences 
and to accept them as the highest system of general 
truth. He likewise taught that the existing systems of 
religion were doomed to decay, and that the only reli- 
gion acceptable to the minds of modern people will be 



THE REVOLUTIONS 1 6/ 

the Religion of Humanity. Even from this brief out- 
line of his leading ideas the reader may see that to 
Auguste Comte the connection between the mathemati- 
cal, physical, and biological sciences on the one hand, 
and the social and historical sciences on the other, was 
very much more intimate than former philosophers had 
ever taught it to be. He taught that all the sciences 
are grouped according to a hierarchy rising from the 
sciences of simple to those of less simple subjects. 
Mathematics, he said, must precede physics as physics 
must precede biology ; and as biology must precede so- 
ciology, or as he called it, Physique Sociale, and the 
study of history. Of this hierarchy he likewise said 
that it is the most natural expression of the interde- 
pendence of the various sciences and of their historical 
development. He taught what he called the Law of 
the three Stages. In accordance with that Law our 
ideas and our social, political, and religious institutions 
must all obey the same law, according to which they 
pass from the theological stage to the metaphysical, and 
finally reach the positive stage. It is undeniable that 
if such a law should really hold good, it would be rela- 
tively easy to formulate innumerable facts of human 
history. Comte really thought that his law would cover 
all these facts, and in various passages of his great 
work he attaches to that law the same value that we 
attach to the law of gravity. Our experiences and re- 
searches since the appearance of Comte' s book have, 
it must be confessed, not borne out this law. Yet, on 
the other hand, it is one of the clearest historical facts 
of modern times that Comte's ideas and the bent of 
his vigorous mind have in England and America, in 



1 68 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

France as in the rest of the Continent, left deep traces 
of their influence. The present French Government is 
really carrying out some of the ideas of Comte. It 
appears that the Governments of Brazil and of most of 
the South American states are proceeding on Comte's 
principles; and whether Comte's hope of putting his 
religion of humanity in the place of Christianity will 
or will not be realized, it will not be possible to deny 
that his ideas and teachings have to a very large 
extent prepared the era of science, and have materially 
contributed to the formation of modern European 
thought. In England both John Stuart Mill and 
Herbert Spencer essayed to carry out the principles 
of Comte ; and the overestimation of the power and the 
results of Science proper, which is so characteristic 
of the British mind in the latter half of the nineteenth 
century, is mainly due to the influence of Auguste 
Comte. At present some of us, at any rate, are trying 
to shake off the injurious consequences of that over- 
estimation of mathematical or exact methods. We 
have learnt to see that however great the value of 
Comte's ideas with regard to science, his application 
of those ideas to social knowledge and history has 
proved a failure. Science can help us very little, if at 
all, in the study of history. Yet with all the modifica- 
tions now required for a due appreciation of Comte we 
cannot help classing him as one of the directing minds 
of the period inaugurated by the great revolutions of 
1848 to 1849. 

The revulsion from the romantic and metaphysical 
school of thought was in Germany, too, embodied by a 
man of singular interest, whose works have had a con- 



THE REVOLUTIONS 1 69 

siderable influence on European minds. We mean 
Alexander von Humboldt. He was not a philosopher 
proper, but he had a rare capacity of synthetizing the 
vast knowledge that he acquired in his travels and also 
from books into clear and convenient generalizations, so 
that the ultimate work of his life, his Kosmos, was for 
his time a fair resumd of man's knowledge of Nature, 
written in a most finished and dignified style. He, too, 
contributed very largely to the preponderance of the 
exact sciences in the minds of European peoples ; 
the sale of his Kosmos was quite unprecedented ; and 
the nations of Europe seemed to be insatiable in the 
acquisition of that natural science of which Humboldt 
(a brother of the diplomatist mentioned in a former lec- 
ture) was the most prominent exponent. 

The contribution of England to that new view of the 
worth and power of Science was in many ways even 
greater, and is summed up in the one name of Charles 
Darwin. His immortal book on the Origin of Species 
appeared in 1859, an d both by the wealth of his data, 
the clearness of his expositions, and the absolute honesty 
and sincerity of the author, at once revolutionized bio- 
logical researches. With a fulness and precision hith- 
erto unknown to biology, Darwin made an attempt to 
explain the mystery of Species in a manner such as 
captivated and in most cases convinced the student. 
The term and idea of Evolution, tabooed by most of 
Darwin's predecessors, now rapidly became the watch- 
word of modern thought. So deep was the satisfaction 
of millions of readers with the explanation offered by 
the theory of Evolution, that finally the very word 
seemed to be a sufficient explanation of events and 



170 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

institutions of nature both dumb and animated, nay, 
human. In the early sixties Evolution was considered 
to be the key to all the enigmas of history and sociology. 
A host of writers, both inferior in knowledge to Darwin 
and less cautious than he, did not hesitate to extend the 
theories of Evolution to the problems of history and 
anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and all 
the other branches of the Humanities. Tyler and 
Lecky in England; Draper in America; Hellwald in 
Germany ; but especially Herbert Spencer, in writings 
very extensive and very numerous, declared Evolution 
to be the long-sought-for means of unriddling the uni- 
verse. In our days a reaction has set in against the 
overestimation of Evolution, and as the author has 
tried to show in another work, the proofs and theories 
of Evolution do not account for nor do they explain the 
leading events of history. But for our present purpose 
it is sufficient to note that in the sixties, let alone the 
seventies and eighties of the last century, the undue 
value attached to the exact sciences led to the extension 
of their methods far beyond anything that they can be 
legitimately applied to. Not only philosophy but also 
theology, the theory and law of politics and literature, 
and similar subjects, were misconstrued or tabooed be- 
cause of that exaggerated love and admiration of the 
exact sciences introduced into modern minds chiefly by 
Comte, Humboldt, and Darwin. As a side consequence 
of that overdone interest in science proper we must 
note the rise of materialism as taught especially by 
Carl Vogt, Lewis Buechner, Moleschott, and others. 
With the characteristic neglect of history so prominent 
in students of the natural sciences, the teachings of 



THE REVOLUTIONS I/I 

materialism were submitted to a curious world of en- 
thusiastic students as the latest outcome of the human 
intellect. Albert Lange had no great difficulty in show- 
ing in his excellent History of Materialism, the absence 
of all claims to originality in the modern materialists. 
However, the tendencies of the people were so strong, 
that materialism together with agnosticism, and a pre- 
posterous neglect of the vast historical importance of 
the holy writings of Christianity, made up the intellec- 
tual caliber of most of the cultured people in Europe in 
the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century. 

Even these few facts will suffice to show that the 
great revolutions in the middle of the last century, 
while they purified the intellectual atmosphere of 
Europe of very many of the worst miasms of roman- 
ticism, undid on the other hand many a wholesome and 
valuable line of intellect cultivated by the romanticists. 
At the present day we still struggle between these two 
conflicting lines of thought, and most of us are inclined 
to think that although the romanticists were largely 
wrong, the scientists and positivists were not wanting 
in deficiencies of considerable gravity. 



X 



THE UNITY OF ITALY 



THE political events in the twenty years from 185 1 
to 1 871 were so great that they can, like all great 
events, be summed up in a few clear words. They may 
be reduced to the following five groups of facts : 

(1) The establishment, prosperity, and downfall of 
the second French Empire. 

(2) The fall of the Austrian Empire from its former 
greatness. 

(3) The defeat of the Russians by the English and 
French, and the consequent gravitation of Russia not 
towards the West, but towards the East, that is, Asia. 

(4) The rise of the unity of Italy. 

(5) The rise of the unity of Germany. 

It will be seen that these five groups of facts com- 
pletely changed the physiognomy of Europe. France, 
after a temporary rise to first-class importance, was 
humiliated and deprived of her great influence. It 
was so with Austria, which up to 1850 was one of the 
great Powers and of decisive influence in all Continental 
matters; it was even so with the influence of Russia, 
which for a long time back had been appreciable in 
nearly the whole of Europe and which now proved un- 
able to make any headway, whether in the southwest 
portion of her Empire, or in Germany, and was forced 
to seek for new fields of conquest in uncivilized Asia. 

172 



THE UNITY OF ITALY 1 73 

Finally, by the rise of a united Germany and Italy, new 
powers were introduced into the concert of Europe 
which, as everybody knows, have had influence not only 
on the Continent, but on the international position of 
England, America, and the Far East. These momen- 
tous changes were realized chiefly by the genius, luck, 
and energy of two men, Bismarck in Germany and Ca- 
vour in Italy. If we now add similar events, not as 
comprehensive, but of almost equal importance, such as 
the unification of Hungary by Francis Deak and the 
rise of the Danubian principalities and kingdoms (king- 
dom of Roumania, kingdom of Servia, principality of 
Bulgaria, etc.), we have exhausted the number of really 
important and influential events during the latter half of 
the nineteenth century. 

Louis Napoleon, as we saw, was made President of 
the French Republic, and by the coup d'etat of the 2d 
December, 185 1, he made himself Emperor of the 
French. There are few men in modern history with 
regard to whom the judgment of their contemporaries 
was led astray in a more pitiable manner than with 
regard to Louis Napoleon. As the heir of the great 
Napoleon he impressed the nations and gave rise to 
an appreciation wholly out of proportion to his real 
merits. Napoleon III. was neither a man of genius nor 
a man of action. He was a strange combination of a 
dreamer and yet a persistent worker; a man lacking 
in the chief quality of a ruler, that is, in the sense of 
proportion as applied to the great events and leading 
persons of his time. Nearly all the ideals floating 
before his mind were impracticable and adverse to the 
interests both of his dynasty and of his subjects. He 



174 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

pursued a nationalist policy, dreaming of the union of 
nations and wasting his time, money, and power on an 
enterprise that promised neither glory nor profit. 

The Italians, ever since they had been united into 
the kingdom of Italy by Napoleon the Great, had never 
given up the idea of restoring the unity of the Penin- 
sula. That idea had been in their minds and hearts for 
over a thousand years previously. The greatest minds 
and characters of Italy ; generals and admirals, thinkers, 
poets and men of action, all had, in innumerable books, 
articles, poems, and actions, attempted to pave the way 
for the restoration of the unity of Italy. All these 
attempts had been, however, in vain. It is one of the 
deepest lessons of history that Italy, which in times 
before Christ had, under Roman rule, succeeded in 
uniting the whole Western world, was, after the fall of 
the Roman Empire in the fifth century of our era, 
absolutely unable to make good her own unity. It is 
a further curious teaching of history, it must now be 
added, that the unity which Italy before Christ con- 
ferred upon the European world and which after Christ 
she was unable to secure for herself, was in the nine- 
teenth century given to her by the great Powers of 
Europe, chiefly by France. Thus there is no exaggera- 
tion in saying that the unity which Italy formerly gave 
to the world, the world gave to her in the nineteenth 
century. 

The forces of the Italians themselves were curiously 
inadequate. In the Italian character there are, as in 
all high-strung natures, the most surprising contradic- 
tions. In private life there is no more dramatic nation 
than the Italians, yet they have never produced dra- 



THE UNITY OF ITALY 1 75 

matic literature of any high order. In public life there 
are no more ardent politicians than the Italians, and 
their wonderful intelligence, dash, and courage seemed 
to promise national or concerted action on a grand 
scale. In reality, however, the Italians of the last 
century consistently shrank from grand and open 
actions, and their greatest statesman, Cavour, instead 
of choosing the methods of Bismarck or of some Italian 
hothead like Garibaldi, unswervingly clung to methods 
quite the reverse of open warfare and military exploits. 
Already during the time of the Reaction, as we have 
seen, the Italians essayed to make good their unity by 
secret societies, anonymous risings, and nameless politi- 
cal murders. It seemed impossible to prevail upon the 
people in Italy to rise in a body. With all due recog- 
nition of the immense merits of the Catholic Church for 
the rest of the world it cannot be denied that in the 
nineteenth as well, as in the preceding centuries the 
Papacy prevented the Italians from accomplishing any 
great action on behalf of Italian unity. The Papal 
States took up the very centre of Italy and thus cut the 
Peninsula into two halves, linked by a state neither 
national nor powerful enough to offer protection. This 
" third body " in the polity of Italy has, as Machiavelli 
observed, always been the real cause of the disunion of 
Italy. The Popes had in former times very frequently 
invoked the help of foreign potentates in order to foil 
any attempt on the part of Italian princes or heads of 
states to secure the unity of Italy. Cavour now turned 
the tables on the Popes ; and the very policy that they 
had used for centuries to deprive Italy of the advan- 
tages of union was now utilized by Cavour to secure 



176 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

that unity, despite all the antagonistic policy of the 
Pope and of the smaller monarchs in Italy. Bismarck, 
as is well known and as we shall see in a subsequent 
chapter, had proceeded on the lines of a policy in many 
ways directly opposite to that of Cavour. He, too, 
laboured at the unity of Germany, but he was con- 
vinced, and events proved him right, that that unity 
could only be obtained by "blood and iron." Cavour, 
on the other hand, who had made a deep study of Eng- 
lish, French, and Italian history, had come to an en- 
tirely different solution of the same problem. Without 
entirely discarding the more aggressive patriots, he was 
determined to secure the unity of Italy by making that 
great aim an interest of France in the first place, of 
England and Prussia in the next. Once, he rightly 
thought, the great Powers of Europe, or most of them, 
are interested on behalf of the unity of Italy, their 
combined forces will force down all opposition on the 
part of Austria, the Pope, or the King of Naples ; just 
as had been the case in 1830 when Belgium wanted to 
become an independent State and succeeded, because 
England in the first place, and also other Powers, had 
an interest in seeing Belgium separated from Holland. 

The deep diplomacy of Cavour was very consider- 
ably aided by some of the most excessive radicals, dema- 
gogues, and patriots of Italy. For this is the unfailing 
sign of a great policy, that circumstances apparently 
opposed to it are in reality helping it forward. Nothing 
more contradictory can be imagined than the cautious, 
prudent, cunning policy of Cavour, and the exaggerated 
zeal of some of the Carbonari who, like Mazzini, Orsini, 
and others, were firm in their belief that the unity of 



THE UNITY OF ITALY 1 77 

Italy could be achieved more rapidly by the dagger and 
the bomb than by diplomatic negotiations. Yet these 
very radicals and extremists helped Cavour so essentially 
that his great triumph in July, 1858, the secret alliance 
with Napoleon III., was entirely owing, in the first 
place, to the desperate action of Orsini in January of 
the same year. A few words will put that quite clearly. 
Cavour in reality, as an Italian statesman, was techni- 
cally only the minister of the King of Sardinia, that is, 
of the western part of Lombardy, then a small and un- 
important country. The diplomacy of the House of 
Savoy or the Kings, formerly the Dukes, of Piedmont in 
Sardinia, has, like that of many a small nation surrounded 
by mighty Powers, always been characterized by exceed- 
ing subtlety and carefulness. It was in Cavour that that 
dexterity in seizing the reins of diplomacy was carried 
to its highest perfection. Cavour wanted to persuade 
Napoleon to wage war with Austria, which ever since 
the Congress of Vienna had been the most important 
military power in Italy. Austria possessed practically 
the whole of the north of Italy except Sardinia, and was 
preponderant in the rest of the Peninsula. The King 
of Sardinia single-handed could not hope to cope suc- 
cessfully with Austria ; and no serious hope of uniting 
the other monarchs of Italy against Austria could be en- 
tertained. Military help therefore was bound to come 
from France. It was sufficient for Cavour that England 
and Prussia should give their moral support in the mat- 
ter, which they both did in ample measure. Already in 
1854, when England and France had begun the Crimean 
campaign against Russia, Cavour, in order to place them 
under obligations to Italy, had sent out a considerable 



178 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

corps of Italian soldiers to the Crimea as an auxiliary 
army for the allies. 

The decisive event, however, was the attempted crime 
of Orsini. It appears that Napoleon III., long before 
he succeeded in ascending the throne of France, and 
when he was still a roaming adventurer, had promised 
to the Italian patriots that whenever he should succeed 
in his aspirations he would extend to them a helping 
hand and put an end to the political and social anarchy 
of Italy. There is little doubt that Napoleon took these 
promises pretty seriously. Like all the members of the 
Napoleon family, he had deep Italian sympathies ; and, 
moreover, his general policy made him take his early 
promises to the Italian patriots as part of a policy both 
practical and sublime. However, the exigencies of his 
home as well as his foreign policy, the great war with 
Russia from 1854 to 1856, had prevented him from real- 
izing his promises ; and to numerous secret reminders 
on the part of the Italian patriots he answered evasively. 
These patriots had always threatened him with death 
unless he redeemed the promises made to them in the 
autumn of 1857. The most resolute of these patriots, 
Orsini, left London for Paris, determined to put an end 
to the life of Napoleon. With several accomplices he 
ambushed Napoleon in a street near the Opera in Paris, 
whither Napoleon, his wife Eugenie, and other members 
of his court were repairing in the evening of the 14th 
January, 1858. Orsini and his accomplices threw several 
bombs at the carriage of the Emperor ; the bombs ex- 
ploded, and killed and wounded over one hundred and 
forty persons ; however, the Emperor and his wife es- 
caped unscathed. Orsini in prison behaved with the 



THE UNITY OF ITALY 1 79 

most heroic steadfastness. Napoleon really wanted to 
pardon him, but it appeared that it would have been un- 
wise to pardon the assassin of so many persons ; the in- 
dignation of the French public was too intense. Orsini, 
however, made the Emperor promise that a French army 
would enter Italy and wage war with Austria, and hav- 
ing obtained this formal promise from Napoleon, Orsini 
mounted the scaffold with serenity. 

Napoleon could no longer doubt the very serious 
character of the threats constantly levelled at him by 
the Italian patriots. Under the pretence of taking the 
waters at Plombieres in central eastern France, he had 
an interview with Cavour, and there a formal alliance 
was made and a promise given that at an early date 
war should be made against Austria both by France 
and Sardinia, and after the successful termination of 
the war Austria's power in Italy would be put an end 
to. 

Although Napoleon, as already remarked, was quite 
sincere in his ideas about the principle of nationality, 
and seriously believed that nothing but good could come 
from a still greater union amongst the distracted terri- 
tories of Italy and other countries, yet personally he was 
not in favour of the union of the whole of the Italian 
Peninsula. At that time a number of French diploma- 
tists and politicians warned him of the inevitable conse- 
quences that a unity of all Italy could not but entail 
upon the prestige and power of France. Italy, they 
said, if united, will only be the prelude to a similar union 
in Germany and in other portions of Europe, and France 
will inevitably suffer from the rise of new and powerful 
national states. Napoleon did not deny the force of 



180 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

these arguments. However, he hoped to keep the patri- 
otic enthusiasm of the Italians within bounds, and to make 
of Italy, not one kingdom under the rule of the House of 
Savoy, but four kingdoms under the suzerainty of 
France. In this entirely false view he was confirmed 
by the subtlety and diplomacy of Cavour, who himself 
very well knew that once Austria's power was broken 
in Italy, and the friendship and moral support of France 
and England secured, nothing could prevent the Italians 
from establishing themselves as one single united mon- 
archy. Napoleon declared war against Austria, and the 
war was rapidly finished by the campaign of 1859, the 
two most important engagements being at Magenta, 
near Milan, and at Solferino, close to Mantua. The 
Austrian army, although in no wise inferior to that of 
the French, was badly generalled, and a few misunder- 
standings sufficed to produce the defeat of Austria in 
both engagements. The Italians, drunk with enthusi- 
asm, wanted to force Napoleon to continue the campaign, 
hoping to oust the Austrians from Italy altogether. 
However, Napoleon now took fright at the vast waves 
of national enthusiasm roused in Italy. In order to 
keep it within bounds he hurried on a peace with Austria 
at Villa Franca. According to that peace the Austrians 
were still to retain very considerable Venetian territory 
in Italy ; but the rest of Lombardy they handed over to 
Napoleon, who ceded it to the King of Sardinia. The 
Italians were furious in their disappointment. They 
considered Napoleon a greater enemy of theirs than 
were the Austrians. They claimed, and not without a 
fair show of justice, that one more battle, the success of 
which was scarcely doubtful, would have made secure 



THE UNITY OF ITALY l8l 

the unity of Italy. They reproached Napoleon with a 
childish fear of the anger of the Pope, Pius IX., and 
with the intention of keeping Italy in her old anarchy. 
Garibaldi and other Italian patriots, especially Mazzini, 
published innumerable pamphlets, calling upon the 
Italian nation to rise in a body and to drive out her ene- 
mies. Cavour, who continually clung to his diplomacy, 
and who was, moreover, crushed by illness, overwork, 
and the considerable strain of continuous vigilance and 
diplomatic negotiations, still managed to hold the balance 
between the wavering of Napoleon, the hostility of the 
Austrians and the Pope, and the excessive claims of 
the ultras. He died in June, 1861, and by that time the 
unity of Italy was a foregone conclusion. The patriots 
under Garibaldi had, by their bold initiative in Sicily 
and Naples, so irretrievably engaged and compromised 
the people of southern Italy, that one part of Italy after 
another declared for Victor Emmanuel, hitherto only 
King of Lombardy, as King of Italy. The inevitable and 
necessary advent of the unity of Italy was finally quite 
clearly shown in 1866, when Victor Emmanuel, although 
beaten by Austria on sea and on land at Lissa and at 
Custozza, nevertheless made good his claim to the Ve- 
netian territory still in the hands of Austria, so that the 
whole of Italy, except the city of Rome, was in August, 
1866, under the rule of Victor Emmanuel as King of 
Italy. The City of Rome was entered by the Italians 
a few weeks after the commencement of the Franco- 
German War, and ever since Italy has been a united 
monarchy. 

The events of the fifties and sixties of the last century 
fully proved the correctness of Cavour's policy. He 



1 82 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

was right in thinking that the famous saying, " Italia 
fara da sk " (" Italy will do it all alone "), was a useful 
war-cry, but historically and diplomatically the greatest 
untruth. It was not Italy that made the unity of the 
Peninsula: it was France; it was, to a certain extent, 
England ; it was Prussia. The result of Cavour's policy 
redounds to his personal glory as much as did later on 
the results of the policy of Bismarck to the glory of the 
Germans. We say, to Cavour's personal glory, for we 
mean to intimate that his policy exalted far more his own 
genius than it contributed to the greatness of Italy. No 
nation that has won her liberty and independence at the 
hands of another people can ever hope to rank as a really 
great nation before many a generation after her libera- 
tion. Had the Italians won the battles of Magenta and 
Solferino single-handed, and without the aid of any one 
else, as the Greeks did the battle of Salamis, and the 
English their battles against the Armada, or the Germans 
the battles against France, there would undoubtedly have 
been a far more rapid growth in the social economy and 
political reconstruction of Italy. The forces that made 
Italy were not her own forces ; and so the immense im- 
petus given to a nation by the triumphs on all-important 
battlefields has been lacking to her. More than thirty- 
five years has now elapsed since Victor Emmanuel was 
made King of all Italy, and while the Italians have been 
making great efforts to work the regeneration of their 
nation, and while by international courtesy they are con- 
sidered a great Power, yet in reality they are far from 
being so. Internally sapped by the relentlessly hostile 
agitation of the Catholic Church ; her southern provinces 
cankered by ignoble poverty, brigandage, and total lack 



THE UNITY OF ITALY 1 83 

of industrial enterprise ; her population constantly 
drained by emigration to South America ; Italy is still 
far from that greatness that her patriots hoped to see 
as soon as the enemy, more particularly Austria, should 
leave the country. There is of course no reason to de- 
spair of Italy. Her people as individuals are in many 
ways the most gifted in Europe. The resources both of 
her moral and intellectual nature are boundless ; her 
position in the 'centre of the Mediterranean opens im- 
mense vistas of material success for her in the near 
future, but the initial mistake of winning her independ- 
ence at [the hands of others will tell on her heavily for 
many a year to come. 



XI 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 



THE history of the unity of Germany is in many 
ways one of the most instructive chapters of 
history. For in Germany perhaps more than in most 
countries the old perennial and terrible fight of man 
against nature has been fought out, and has finally 
led to results considerable and perhaps all-important. 
Like all the other nations of Europe, the Germans have 
always tried to make the limits of their country 
conterminous with the limits of their language. Europe 
has at no time been given to the Roman ideal, and just 
as a United States of Europe is, as we shall see, impossi- 
ble in the near or in the far future, so it was impractica- 
ble in the last 2000 years. Europe consists at present 
of over forty highly organized polities, each of which 
clings to its personality in language, law, custom, and 
every other feature of national life with uncompromis- 
ing tenacity. Each of these states has at all times tried 
to combine and unite its members and to separate itself 
from its neighbours. The centripetal forces in Europe 
have always been in the minority, and even the greatest 
emperors and conquerors have found that their dreams 
of uniting Europe under one rule were short-lived and 
sterile. 

This work of union, this attempt to bring together 
in one highly differentiated state the members of one 

184 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 1 85 

and the same nation, this old historical endeavour of 
the European peoples, has been realized in some 
countries earlier than in others. The English proper 
realized it in the early middle ages, and what is at pres- 
ent England and Wales were one country already in 
1284. Next came the French. It took an enormous 
number of wars, battles, sieges, campaigns, intrigues, 
marriages, treaties, etc., in fact, all the resources of 
pacific and warlike policy, to unite the south of France 
with the north, and the west with the east. At last, 
under the Bourbon kings, early in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and with regard to Lorraine in 1 766, all the parts 
of modern France were united under one rule, although 
the homogeneity of the people was still far from com- 
plete, as we have seen in the first lecture on the French 
Revolution. 

Germany proper was unable to secure her unity 
before the latter part of the nineteenth century. Ger- 
many is mostly an inland country, and has so far had 
no considerable sea power. It will be noticed that in- 
land countries are not easily united ; and even a com- 
mon ruler leaves the people, the subjects themselves, 
in a state of utter discrepancy and divergence among 
themselves. It is really the sea that unites people, and 
France, having a very considerable sea power as early 
as the seventeenth century, had in this very circum- 
stance an enormous leverage over Germany. Of the 
diverse elements of what was called the Holy Roman 
Empire of the Germanic nation in previous centuries, 
it is very difficult to form a definite idea. The number 
of sovereigns, from a small lord to the Emperor of the 
Holy Roman Empire, who all had sovereign rights over 



1 86 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

their respective subjects, is positively amazing. There 
is no exaggeration in stating that between the Rhine 
and the Elbe rivers the number of very small, small, 
great, and greater sovereigns in the seventeenth century 
was over iooo. Even then the fiction of a united 
Holy Roman Empire under the German Emperor was 
upheld, but it was a mere fiction. The emperor had no 
fixed nor considerable revenue; he had no standing 
and efficient army; and being at the same time the 
ruler of Austria and Hungary he had no vital interest 
in the welfare of his provinces outside his Danubian 
monarchy. In fact, the interest of the Habsburg em- 
perors was rather the other way. The more Germany 
was split up into innumerable little sovereignties, the 
more it was unable to offer very great resistance to the 
Habsburgs. The great international treaty of 1648, 
the so-called Westphalian Peace, had really increased 
the anarchic state of Germany, and by its terms 
Sweden and France stood as guarantors or perpetuators 
of the German anarchy. It is at the present day 
almost impossible to realize the confusion, the chaos, 
the incredible disorder, that reigned in Germany in con- 
sequence of this political dismemberment. Each sov- 
ereign had coins of his own, had customs-lines of his 
own, had little armies of his own, separate individual 
codes of law of his own ; the religion of the sovereign 
decided as a rule the religion of his subjects, and a very 
considerable portion of Germany was "under the 
crozier," belonging as it did to powerful ecclesiastical 
potentates such as the Archbishops of Cologne, of 
Mayence, of Treves, and the Bishops of Bamberg and 
Wiirtzburg. Litigation in the courts of these small 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 1 87 

sovereigns, and appeals to the central court of the Em- 
peror, were, as a rule, exposed to the most exasperating 
delays and to ruinous expense. The great German 
poet Schiller, in his tragedy Kabale und Liebe ("In- 
trigue and Love"), has given us a terrible picture of the 
cruelty and oppression practised by these petty tyrants. 
Commerce flourished very little, and the German towns 
had long fallen from that commercial importance which 
they had reached in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies. The people were quite indifferent to their lot, 
and did not even rise when the Landgrave of Hesse 
sold them like chattels to the English to fight the 
Americans in the war of 1 775-1 783. The position of 
the women was, especially in the seventeenth century, 
most degrading. The German woman, at no time 
endued with any superior intellectual energy, was in 
the seventeenth century an altogether obscure and 
insignificant partner of her husband. It is true that in 
the first half of the eighteenth century the status of 
German women was considerably raised, and we hear 
of many an energetic, highly intellectual and cultivated 
woman in the lives of the great German writers of that 
century. 

This rapid sketch of the misery of the Germans for 
lack of political or economic unity must now be supple- 
mented with a picture of a more agreeable kind. The 
Germans, while politically paralyzed and unable to 
shake off the torpor that had fallen upon them since 
the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, had yet one 
great ideal in common ; as they describe it themselves, 
while Germany was practically a mere geographical 
expression, "Germandom" (Deutschthum) soon began to 



1 88 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

exert itself. To put it in plain words, the unity of the 
Germans was, in contrast to that of the English and 
French, at first not a political unity but an intellectual 
one. They were politically as diverse as if they had 
been total foreigners to one another. Intellectually, 
however, they had begun, ever since the second half 
of the eighteenth century, to feel themselves as a na- 
tion, to learn the immense value of their language in 
scientific and literary works, and so to feel a conscious- 
ness of German nationality which, although still lack- 
ing political union, yet prepared the way for the latter 
too. In this sense the history of German literature is 
even more important to the historian than is the history 
of French or English literature. The works in which 
for the first time the unparalleled resources of the Ger- 
man language were made use of were the greatest 
possible incentive to a feeling of nationality in Germany. 
Even up to the middle of the eighteenth century all 
the most valuable works published in Germany were 
still written either in Latin or in French. When, how- 
ever, in the second half of that century Lessing, 
Herder, Goethe, Wieland, Schiller, and other very nu- 
merous German writers, in their works — many of which 
will survive forever — manifested the astounding 
power of the German idiom, its adaptability to prose 
and poetry alike, its capacity for the highest philosophi- 
cal researches as well as for the lowest comedy ; its 
force in narrative, didactic, and descriptive style alike — 
when all this became clear to the enthusiastic readers 
of these authors, the Germans felt that a new era had 
begun in their history. As in the sixteenth century 
the spiritual reform of the Reformation had brought 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 1 89 

home to the Germans their spiritual unity, so in the 
first half of the eighteenth century and in the first third 
of the nineteenth century the constantly increasing 
number of classical works written in German impressed 
upon the Germans the fact that they were fast becoming 
united intellectually too. 

The disasters falling upon the Germans from 1805- 
1807 at the hands of Napoleon, and of which we have 
been speaking in former chapters, could not but impart 
to every single German a feeling that a nation cannot 
rest with a unity which is only intellectual and spiritual. 
More than that was needed. Political unity was re- 
quired, and it now became not only a dream but a 
practical interest for all Germans to consolidate the 
unity of their political edifice in order to reap the bene- 
fit of their spiritual and intellectual unity at leisure. 
At that time the question really was, not whether the 
political unity of Germany should be attempted, for on 
that point all German-speaking nations were at one, 
but which German *power should realize the unity ? 

As we have seen, the house of Habsburg or Austria 
played, even in 18 15, a considerable role in the so-called 
German Confederation, and until 1850 the King of 
Prussia, the only rival of the Habsburgs, could not se- 
cure any ascendency or hegemony in that Confedera- 
tion, and thus it was hoped by very many people that 
the unity of Germany was to come from Austria. The 
problem, therefore, which the Germans had to solve in 
the second half of the nineteenth century, was whether 
their political unity should come from south Germany 
or Austria, whence had come their spiritual and intel- 
lectual unity, or whether it should come from north- 



190 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

ern Germany or Prussia, which had hitherto done little 
or nothing for the intellectual regeneration of the nation 
except the establishment of a few universities, and 
which had in 1806 and 1807 proved itself to be utterly 
helpless, disorganized, and decadent. Such as hoped to 
see the unity of Germany realized by Austria were 
singularly mistaken about the nature of that Power. 
The Habsburgs, for reasons that are not quite clear, 
have never been able to unite any of the nations that 
have come under their rule in a real union. They have 
always been able to make conglomerations or external 
accumulations of provinces. Their only device in as- 
similating or uniting the heterogeneous people of their 
empire has always been to ally themselves with the 
Catholic Church, and so secure a certain kind of unity. 
However, it is quite clear that the Catholic Church, in 
spite of the admirable system of centralization and her 
great powers of bringing about uniformity of thought 
and sentiment, could not produce that political and in- 
ternal or national unity which alone in modern times 
can give real power to a state. Austria, in other words, 
or rather the Habsburgs, have at all times been unsuc- 
cessful in their attempts at bringing about that political 
and national unity which in the latter half of the nine- 
teenth century many a patriotic German hoped to see 
introduced into their own country at the hands of the 
Habsburgs. 

In order to understand this important point very 
clearly we must hark back for a moment to the times 
of a war which happened long before the period here 
treated, but the influence of which is clearly sensible to 
the present day. We mean the famous Silesian wars 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 191 

which, with the interruption of a few years (1748- 1756), 
raged from 1740 to 1763. In 1741, Frederick the Great 
succeeded by one victory, obtained by his generals at 
Mollwitz, in wresting from Maria-Theresa, the ruler of 
Austria-Hungary, the large and fertile province of 
Silesia. All the campaigns that followed, with their 
numerous battles until the peace of 1763, may from the 
standpoint of our present considerations be quite 
omitted. They were excessively numerous, and some of 
them very famous, yet they were unable to alter in any 
way whatever the effect of the battle of Mollwitz, and 
they may therefore for our present purpose be left out of 
consideration altogether. By the conquest of Silesia 
Frederick the Great acquired a German-speaking prov- 
ince, and was enabled to round off the territory of 
Prussia both territorially and nationally. At that time 
Prussia had very few, if any, inhabitants who were not 
German-speaking, and the German-speaking people all 
but formed the totality of Prussia, whose nationality 
was therefore practically unbroken. On the other hand, 
the loss of Silesia to Maria-Theresa affected the whole 
subsequent history of Austria. For in 1740, before 
Frederick wrested Silesia from Maria-Theresa, the 
majority of the inhabitants in the Austrian Empire 
were Germans. Austria at that time possessed neither 
Galicia nor Bukovina, neither Bosnia nor Venetian Italy. 
The Germans were still in numerical preponderance in 
Austria. By the loss of Silesia this preponderance of 
the German element in Austria was done away with. 
Maria-Theresa, in order to make up for her territorial 
losses, was compelled to seek for compensation east- 
ward, that is, in parts of Europe where there was no 



192 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

German element By her conquests in 1772 and 1775 
(Galicia and Bukovina), in 1797, the Treaty of Campo 
Formio (Venetian Italy), etc., etc., Austria acquired prov- 
inces indeed, but always territories inhabited by peoples 
of an entirely divergent nationality. Thus it may be 
seen that the Silesian wars threw into the heart of Aus- 
tria the seeds of perennial disunion, and rendered Aus- 
tria to the present day incapable of uniting her people 
into a political fabric of homogeneity. Frederick the 
Great indeed deprived Austria not only of a province, 
but in a sense of all her provinces, because Austria 
could never really assimilate those provinces, having 
once lost, as she did, the preponderance of her German 
subjects and being unable to restore it. Prussia, which 
obtained the heterogeneous elements of the three por- 
tions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, was yet so rich 
in her German provinces, especially after the Congress 
of Vienna in 181 5, when she obtained large provinces 
on the Rhine, that her national unity, although broken 
into in her eastern possessions, was infinitely superior 
to that of Austria. 

From the preceding considerations it is evident that 
Prussia was in 1850 in a position of far greater advan- 
tage for the national work of the unity of Germany than 
Austria could possibly be. For Prussia itself occupied 
a very considerable part of Germany proper, it had 
German people as subjects, a perfect unity of language 
and also largely of religion, and all that she lacked 
was some one great statesman who by genius and luck 
might realize the old hope. In Austria, on the other 
hand, the greatest of all statesmen could not have 
entertained a hope of realizing outside Austria, that is, 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 1 93 

in Germany, what a succession of rulers and statesmen 
in the preceding three centuries had never been able 
to realize in Austria proper. The ethnography of 
Austria was against any statesman who would have 
tried to realize the unity of Germany. The ethnog- 
raphy of Germany was quite in favour of Prussia. 
Prussia indeed wanted great men ; Austria could not 
have done much even with the greatest men at the 
helm. In the light of events in our own times we can 
perceive with dazzling clearness that any hope of seeing 
the unity of Germany realized by Austria was doomed 
to failure. Austria had neither a powerfully organized 
and united army, nor a regular and well-stocked ex- 
chequer. She had no national forces either in literature, 
science, art, or any other intellectual or spiritual de- 
partment. Without such aids even the greatest states- 
man is shorn of results. Prussia, on the other hand 
through the reforms introduced by a number of non 
Prussian statesmen, such as Stein, Hardenberg, Schorn- 
horst, Altenstein, and others from 1807 onwards, had 
created a system of national education both in law and 
high schools, by works both scientific and literary, and 
in her army as well as in her national revenue she had 
placed herself in a state of great efficiency. Here in- 
deed a great statesman might, by a clever, timely, and 
successful diplomacy, achieve much. 

The old question whether Athens made Themistocles 
or whether Themistocles made Athens, is to the mind of 
many a historian an unsolvable problem. However, by 
a coincidence no doubt very strange, yet regular, we 
find that in any case of a really great man in history the 
possibilities of his career had long been prepared by the 



194 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

state or the nation to which he belongs. So it is in our 
present case. It cannot be denied that the influence 
of Bismarck from the time when he came to power 
and to the enjoyment of the complete confidence of 
King William of Prussia was a decisive power in the 
history of that country and of Germany. Yet it is 
equally certain that without the previous reforms made 
by such men as Luther, Melanchthon, Brenz, and the 
still greater literary and artistic lights of the Germans 
who gave them intellectual unity, let alone all the 
labours of those great reformers in Prussia who suc- 
ceeded, by indefatigable and ill-requited work, in re- 
storing Prussia to her former greatness, Bismarck's 
genius alone could not have done anything. Bismarck 
at Vienna would have been as helpless as was at the 
same place Schmerling, or Count Beust. Bismarck's 
genius is great, but to him too we may apply the great 
rule of history, "Est locus in rebus" (History is largely 
influenced by the locality where things happen). 

From the Revolution in 1848 to the end of the fifties 
Prussia was still held to be subordinate to Austria 
in point of influence in Germany; and an attack on 
Austria was not considered in any way as promising 
sure success for the Prussian army. At the same time 
the Prussian army had ever since the great defeat of 
Jena in 1806 been reformed and improved and made 
an instrument of fighting second to none in Europe, and, 
as subsequent events have proved, superior to most. 
When Austria in 1859 na d been defeated by France 
(as related above), and had been deprived of most of her 
territory in Italy ; when at the same time the uncom- 
promising position of the Hungarians towards Austria 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 1 95 

rendered the interior security of Austria more than 
problematic ; a new view of the relation of the Danu- 
bian monarchy to Prussia was taken by several Prus- 
sian statesmen. Of those men of action, Bismarck was 
even at that time the most important. He came from 
a small family in North Germany, and had to recom- 
mend him neither wealth nor very remarkable personal 
connections. His strongest recommendation was his 
extraordinary political genius. Now that we have been 
for some time in possession of his letters, his speeches, 
and may with fair prospect of success cast a construc- 
tive glance over the whole life of the great statesman, 
we may perhaps be entitled to formulate his peculiar 
genius in a few concise words. 

Undoubtedly Bismarck was a remarkable personality, 
and sheer personality has always proved a power in 
history; but in addition to the unanalyzable qualities 
and charms of a strong personality, aided by an im- 
posing stature, force, and expressiveness of feature, we 
must always underline the fact that Bismarck was en- 
dowed with particularly great technical gifts for the 
conduct of great political affairs. In the first place, all 
his diplomatic measures and other manoeuvres were 
based on information regarding the persons and cir- 
cumstances he was called upon to deal with, such as 
very few statesmen have ever had at their disposal. 
To a perfect knowledge of Prussia, of the influential 
men and women of recent history, Bismarck joined a 
very rare insight into the general political state of affairs 
in Europe. He was perfect master of the French lan- 
guage, and had also an astounding command of Eng- 
lish ; nay, when later on he was Ambassador in Russia, 



196 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

he acquired a working knowledge of Russian. Of the 
courts and the political situation of the leading Powers 
in Europe he had acquired from personal study and 
from a judicious course of reading such ample and 
accurate knowledge, that as a rule he was better in- 
formed about the tendencies and character of political 
events than most men dealing with them directly or 
indirectly. Through all his life we are struck with that 
solidity of information. As is only natural, from a 
basis so solid and well knit, the vigorous mind of Bis- 
marck could not but infer sound and lasting conclu- 
sions. Accordingly he was seldom mistaken in the 
strategy of his actions, although at all periods of his 
life the wisdom of his methods was challenged, doubted, 
attacked, and even ridiculed by men in important and 
commanding positions. In fact, while we cannot but 
repeat the remark that Bismarck's triumph was only 
the concluding scene of the various antecedent histori- 
cal events preparing the unity of Germany, yet we 
should fly in the face of historical truth if we did not 
recognize that without Bismarck's energy and wisdom 
the last part of the long history of German unity could 
have been enacted only very much later than 1871. 
Bismarck certainly precipitated a political work un- 
doubtedly inevitable, yet still dependent on a concourse 
of circumstances which only a superior statesman was 
able to focus and utilize. 

In our own times, when the passions roused by the 
greatest events in German history have not yet subsided, 
we are treated every year to another work by a German 
professor, tracing the origin of modern Germany either 
to the Emperor William I. alone, or to the anonymous 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 1 97 

yet " exceedingly important" influence of this or that 
minor German sovereign ; or, on the other hand, to Bis- 
marck alone and exclusively. The former opinion, de- 
fended by Professor Ottokar Lorenz, the latter by 
innumerable German writers, are, we take it, both un- 
tenable. Like all great historical facts, the unity of 
Germany was for generations prepared by general and 
vast causes embracing an infinite number of particular 
phenomena ; but was consummated by the strong hand 
of one man. It is certain that that one man was not 
Emperor William I. It is equally certain that that man 
was Bismarck. 

It will be found on intimate study of the times of 
Bismarck that he had firmly seized the necessity of 
bringing about the unity of Germany under Prussian 
ascendency by the most careful conduct of Prussia's 
foreign policy. He knew that the consummation of the 
great work could not be done by the introduction or 
academical spread of mere ideas. He knew it was pre- 
eminently a matter of diplomacy and war. He clearly 
pointed out in letters and speeches, that while some 
nations may bring about their national unity through 
treaties, or the slow work of mutual assimilation, the 
Germans, as he rightly held, could not possibly realize 
their secular hope without establishing themselves as a 
great military power. This is the sense of his famous 
utterance that history is made by blood and iron. No- 
body admired Cavour, the unifier of Italy, more than 
did Bismarck ; likewise nobody acknowledged the sur- 
passing merit of Francis Deak in bringing about the 
unity of Hungary in a peaceful way more than did Bis- 
marck ; but nobody also saw more clearly that the prob- 



198 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

lems with which Deak or Cavour had to contend, although 
identical in their objects with that of Bismarck, yet had 
a character so different that for their realization other 
means were required. It is this clear insight into the 
real needs for the establishment of German unity that 
constitutes the greatness of Bismarck. It is true, his 
complete success has shed an unusual lustre upon his 
name and his policy. However, it is not the success of 
Bismarck that ought to prompt us to recognize him as 
one of the greatest statesmen. It is, as we shall see, 
both the wisdom and the moderation of his politics. As 
diplomatic reverses at home or abroad could never dis- 
courage him, even so the greatest triumphs in the field 
or in diplomatic negotiations were never able to beguile 
him into excessive actions. We must admire both his 
courage and his moderation, and it is probably the latter 
quality which will make his name forever that of a 
model statesman. His adversaries were very numerous. 
It is well known that the Empress Frederick III., the 
daughter of Queen Victoria, was the persistent and im- 
placable enemy of Bismarck. On the other hand, the 
historian Mommsen was likewise continually hostile to 
Bismarck; and it is certain that the great man lived in 
a world of incessant intrigues directed against his person 
and against his work. His greatest successes were un- 
able to persuade the Empress Frederick that she was in 
error, and all his enemies and opponents were conspiring 
to shake the nerve of the Titan. In vain. In addition 
to physical resources of the rarest strength, Bismarck, 
like all great men, had also an unusual amount of good 
luck. Like Richelieu and Mazarin, the two greatest 
ministers of France, Bismarck could, under all circum- 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 1 99 

stances, count on the unswerving attachment and friend- 
ship of his sovereign. Against this powerful friendship 
and steadfast confidence of the monarch all the shafts 
of envy and jealousy were hurled in vain. Not that the 
Emperor always shared the opinions or the desires of 
Bismarck; in fact he was both in 1864, in 1866, and in 
1870 very reluctant to accept the policy of his great 
minister. However reluctant, he in the end consented 
to it, and it is only fair to say that without that constant 
and unfailing support and countenance on the part of 
his monarch, Bismarck could not possibly have resisted 
the unceasing cabal undermining his position. 

In English-speaking countries, let alone in France, 
the prevalent idea of Bismarck is that of a harsh man, 
inaccessible to any human sentiment, and obeying only 
the dictates of political egoism. There is, however, very 
much exaggeration in that picture. Bismarck was 
neither harsh nor cruel. He certainly was imperious 
and was conscious of the necessity of severe measures ; 
but both in private life, whether in his relations to his 
family or to the few personal friends he had (amongst 
whom was the American historian Motley), and in public 
life, his was chiefly the character of a man who acted on 
objective and not on subjective motives. All over Bis- 
marck is written the great German term, Sachpolitik ; 
that is, a policy of real and objective State interests, 
without regard to personal likes or dislikes. In his 
personal character there certainly were two redeeming 
features. In the first place, he was a man of profound 
and serene humour. To the modern mind even Richelieu 
and Mazarin lack this relieving feature, and appear 
therefore somewhat stiff. Bismarck had a remarkable 



200 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

share of that North German humour which is certainly 
more grim than agreeable, but which no doubt helps us 
to put some of the uncouth things of this*world into 
better proportion. It was certainly worthy of the finest 
humour when Bismarck, at the height of the all-decisive 
battle of Sadowa (Koeniggraetz), anxious to know the 
opinion of Moltke, the General-in-Chief, about the prob- 
able issue of the engagement, approached the old and 
very reticent general, not with anxious questions, but by 
offering him his cigar-box and watching Moltke's way of 
selecting the best of the cigars. When Moltke carefully 
examined the cigars and actually found out the best of 
them, Bismarck knew that the battle was going on satis- 
factorily for Prussia, and smilingly withdrew from the 
presence of Moltke. 

The other and even more satisfactory feature in 
Bismarck was his utter frankness. In him there was no 
cant and no hypocrisy. He never said he was righteous 
when he was only political, and it is he who had the 
sincerity of saying, " We Prussians make no moral 
conquests," which in plain English means that Prus- 
sians are selfish, interested, and ruthless fighters. This 
frankness very frequently puzzled and quite misled 
his diplomatic opponents. They were unable to believe 
in it, and so invariably searched for other motives 
behind that apparent frankness. As a matter of fact 
Bismarck was quite frank, and he had absolutely 
broken with the former habit of dissimulation and 
reticence considered to be the two chief artifices of 
diplomacy. It is natural that such frankness is repul- 
sive to people who are habitually self-conscious and 
not frank. On the other hand, it is equally certain 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 201 

that the greatness of Bismarck is increased and not low- 
ered by that noble and virile quality which most men are 
neither allowed nor able to practise in their own lives. 

We have so far seen that Bismarck's successes are 
based on sound information of all the elements and 
factors necessary for his success, and on a personality 
most powerful, sincere, and aided by the constant 
friendship of his monarch. We may now see the 
details of his three great triumphs ; we mean the war 
with Denmark in 1864; the war with Austria in 1866; 
and. the war with France in 1 870-1 871. 

The Danish war we call a triumph, although from 
the military standpoint it was not only not a glory for 
Prussia, who acted against tiny Denmark with the aid 
of Austria, and so could, even in case of great victories, 
have scarcely claimed any particular glory for it ; nay, 
it is well known that the Prussian army did not, in 
1864, manifest any of that superiority which made 
her so famous in the other two wars. We call the 
Danish war a triumph of Bismarck, because it was the 
deeply thought-out manoeuvre of how to embroil and 
compromise Austria, and so bring about the second war. 

Briefly, the facts are these. The Southern provinces 
of Denmark are called Schleswig-Holstein ; they were 
then, as they are now, mostly inhabited by German- 
speaking people, and they commanded especially the 
harbour of Kiel, which it was essential for Prussia to 
have in order to secure command of the Baltic and the 
North Sea, by making (as has been since done) a canal 
between Kiel and the mouth of the Elbe River. At 
that time Austria and Prussia were still both members 
of the German Confederacy, and it was certain that 



202 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

Austria would not allow Prussia to possess herself of 
the two duchies, Schleswig-Holstein, single-handed. 
The Germans, bullies with regard to small people, as 
are all great powers, heeded not the constant and just 
recriminations of Denmark, which had given no umbrage 
or cause for a war to any German sovereign, let alone 
to the German Confederation. 

It was Bismarck's aim to embroil Austria in a ques- 
tion of no possible interest to Austria, and thereby to 
win diplomatic leverage over her. It was likewise his 
object to feel his way in the great international ques- 
tion whether Europe would or would not interfere 
with the plans of Germany. Although most of the 
statesmen in Prussia seriously objected to Bismarck's 
Danish policy, apprehending, as they did, the im- 
mediate interference of England (the Princess of 
Wales being a daughter of the King of Denmark), 
yet Bismarck was right in assuming that neither Eng- 
land nor Russia would interfere, and that the only 
upshot of the whole enterprise would be to engage 
Austria in what for her was a sterile and embarrassing 
undertaking. 

In this he completely succeeded. The Danes were 
of course in the end forced to submit, and Austria and 
Prussia administered the two duchies in common. 
Bismarck rightly calculated that such common ad- 
ministration of a province, useful only to neighbour- 
ing Prussia, could not but lead to friction, and thus 
give him a new handle for complications with Austria. 
And when matters did not proceed rapidly enough, 
Bismarck forced a treaty upon Austria, the treaty of 
Gastein, August 14th, 1865, in which he apparently put 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 203 

an end to possible friction in the administration of the 
two duchies, by giving Austria and Prussia two distinct 
territories for administration ; yet in reality the treaty 
of Gastein was, by its very nature, certain to lead to 
still more serious complications. Austria, as Bismarck 
expected her to be, found herself wronged, and the war 
of 1866 became only a matter of a few incidents which 
Bismarck did not hesitate to provoke. At that time 
Bismarck was struggling both with his numerous 
adversaries at the Court of Berlin, and with the un- 
yielding Parliament of Prussia, the members of which, 
in utter ignorance of the necessities of the case, re- 
fused Bismarck supplies for the army, and so forced 
him to find the means of keeping up the army, and 
increasing it by autocratic ordinances of the King, 
countersigned by him. He then (1 863-1 865) was the 
most unpopular man in Prussia. However, he per- 
sisted, because he clearly saw that the war with Aus- 
tria was inevitable, and that by such a war alone the 
destiny of Germany and the ascendency of Prussia 
could possibly be realized. 

As already stated, King William, as he then was, 
was very much opposed to the war with Austria, and 
only with great difficulty could Bismarck persuade him 
to enter upon it. Moltke, on the other hand, was quite 
confident of defeating the Austrian army. In fact, the 
defeat of the Austrian army was for every expert a 
foregone conclusion. In addition to the usual defect 
of all Austrian armies, that is to say, to their diversity of 
languages and races and the consequent lack of unity 
so fatal to all armies, the Austrian army then was still 
armed with old-patterned rifles, — with muzzle-loaders, — 



204 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

whereas the Prussians had breech-loaders, so that the 
Prussian infantry was able to shoot six times more 
quickly than did the Austrians. 

It is to the ordinary contemplator of the manners 
and actions of governments one of the greatest riddles 
how bureaucratic governments will, even in the face 
of the greatest dangers, scarcely move to introduce 
reforms. The fact that the Prussian army was pro- 
vided with much superior arms had long been known 
by Austria and by everybody ; yet no attempt was 
made to improve the Austrian rifle. In addition to 
this, another characteristic feature of Austrian military 
organization was practised: the old Austrian mistake 
of placing the wrong man in the right place, and the 
right man in the wrong place. Bismarck had, as we 
have seen in a former chapter, long promised Italy to 
help her in her attempts at unity, and accordingly he 
had early in 1866 concluded a treaty with the Italian 
Government, in keeping with which Italy was bound 
to attack Austria in Lombardy at the same time that 
Prussia should attack Austria in Bohemia. At that 
time the Austrian general Benedek had from long ex- 
perience a very complete knowledge of Lombardy, and 
was no doubt able to conduct a successful campaign 
against Italy. Archduke Albert, on the other hand, the 
Austrian Emperor's uncle, had a very authoritative and 
useful knowledge of Bohemia, and would have no 
doubt played a creditable role in a Bohemian cam- 
paign against Prussia. In that war, therefore, Benedek 
should have obtained the chief command in Lom- 
bardy, which he knew very well, and Archduke Albert 
the chief command in Bohemia, with which he was so 



THE UNITY OF GERMANY 205 

intimately acquainted. However, Austrian wisdom, as 
usual, intrusted Benedek with the command in Bohemia, 
of which he knew nothing, and sent Albert to Italy, 
where his presence against the small and untrained 
army of Italy was scarcely required. 

The military consequences of that blunder became 
manifest at once. Benedek, attacked in the northeast 
of Bohemia by the converging troops of Prussia under 
Moltke and the Crown Prince, lost his head at once, 
and by a series of strategic mistakes lost a number 
of minor engagements, and finally, in the great battle 
of Sadowa or Koeniggraetz, on July 3d, 1866, was 
forced to beat a hasty retreat. The Prussians at once 
followed him and occupied Moravia and marched close 
to Vienna. It was then that Bismarck's greatness and 
real statesmanship were shining in the most brilliant 
manner. The Prussian army and all its generals, to- 
gether with the Prussian king, were intoxicated with 
their rapid victories, and in their enthusiasm naturally 
insisted with violence on entering Vienna. However, 
Bismarck, whose eyes were already directed towards 
France, and who wanted to complete the great scheme 
of the German nation, clearly felt that he would soon 
need the friendship and alliance of Austria, and that he 
could obtain neither by a gratuitous humiliation of the 
Austrian ruler, such as an entrance into Vienna would 
unfailingly entail upon the latter. He therefore clearly 
and unmistakably declared to his sovereign that it was 
in the greatest interest of Prussia to discontinue her 
victorious progress, and to make peace with Austria on 
a basis not humiliating to the conquered. Another 
Prussian army had meanwhile made a most victorious 



206 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

advance into Hanover and the South-German States, 
who had joined Austria and were trying to fight Prussia. 
On the other hand, however, the Austrians had been 
very successful against the Italians, both on sea and on 
land, and Italy was practically at the mercy of Austria. 
Finally, Bismarck was afraid, as he himself said later 
on, that Napoleon III., Emperor of France, in order 
to put an end to the rapid victories of Prussia, might 
attack the Rhenish provinces and thereby render 
Sadowa and other successful battles of the war barren 
and unprofitable. 

When Bismarck saw that no ordinary means would 
suffice to persuade the generals and the Prussian King 
to adopt his view of the situation, he threatened to take 
his life rather than consent to an entry into Vienna and 
the humiliation of the Austrian ruler. As usual he pre- 
vailed, and the Peace of Prague was made (1866), by 
which Austria lost no territory whatever, and had to 
pay a merely nominal sum by way of compensation, but 
by which Austria consented to be no longer a member 
of the German Confederation. In consequence of that, 
Prussia, which had meanwhile incorporated Hanover 
and other territories, especially Frankfort-on-the-Main, 
had become the leading Power in Germany, and Bis- 
marck now established the North-German Confederacy, 
which was a partial realization of the great hope of the 
German nation. Italy, as we have seen, now obtained 
even the Venetian territory hitherto held by Austria, 
and so the campaign of 1866 established the ascendency 
of Prussia in Germany, completed the unity of Italy, 
and to the present day placed Austria on the level of a 
minor Power. 



XII 

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 

THE victories of the Prussians in 1866; the ascen- 
dency of Prussia in Germany since the day of 
Sadowa, were events the importance of which was 
clear to many a statesman and diplomatist in Europe. 
Thiers, Edgar Quinet, and other leading politicians 
and public men of France, clearly pointed out that 
Bismarck could not possibly rest on the laurels of his 
Austrian campaign ; that he was necessarily striving 
to complete the unity of Germany, which in 1867 was 
yet far from being completed. Bismarck in 1866 had 
united the Northern states of Germany into the North- 
German Confederacy ; but the Southern states — Ba- 
varia, Wiirtemberg, and Baden — were not yet combined 
with Prussia. It is a question quite open to historical 
discussion whether Bismarck could not already in 1866 
have brought about the unity of the Northern with the 
Southern states of Germany. In fact, many a modern 
historian has reproached Bismarck, with great show of 
justice, with a deliberate plan of retarding the unity of 
all Germany between 1866 to 1870. Bismarck, it is 
said, whose military success over Bavaria in 1866 had 
been as complete as his success over Austria, might 
have very well forced Bavaria and other Southern states 
of Germany to join the North-German Confederacy. 
In that way the Franco-German war might easily have 

207 



208 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

been avoided, and the unity of Germany secured in a 
peaceful manner, without the terrible loss in men and 
money entailed by the gigantic war in 1870 and 1871. 

It cannot be denied that in the preceding arguments 
there are some elements of truth ; and Bavaria, al- 
though at all times highly differentiated from the rest 
of Germany, .and more especially from Prussia, might 
have been persuaded to join the North-German Con- 
federacy without the terrible war against France. On 
the other hand, Bismarck's considerations were of a 
deeper, and, on the whole, of a juster nature. He 
felt that the South-German states could not be per- 
manently held as members of a united Germany, un- 
less a great and successful war would put an end to 
any attempt at local separation, and to the numerous 
centrifugal tendencies of the Catholic Church and 
Catholic sovereign families in the south of Germany. 
Moreover, it is well known that those Southern states 
in 1867 as well as in 1740 or 1645, were always co- 
quetting with France, and had, by secular tradition 
and habit, a policy of friendship, nay, of alliance, with 
the French. These old historical traditions and ten- 
dencies, Bismarck rightly felt, could not be efficiently 
combated by anything short of a successful war against 
France, in which the Bavarians too would be obliged 
to undergo the sufferings and to accept the sacrifices 
necessary to the completion of the great plan. Bis- 
marck, therefore, made no definite attempt at persuad- 
ing Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden from 1866 to 
1870 to join the North-German confederates. 

In France, the fates of the nation were partly in the 
hands of Napoleon III., partly in those of an ob- 



THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 209 

streperous, hysterical, and aimless opposition. Napo- 
leon III., at no time a great statesman, was then more- 
over enfeebled and rendered practically useless by his 
physical inability — he suffered from stone disease — 
and his plans were easily overridden by those of his 
wife Eugenie. The Empress was one of the most 
beautiful women in Europe. In body endowed with 
the most astounding vigour and health, she was in 
mind a narrow, resourceless, and badly advised woman, 
whose only plan was to secure the inheritance for her 
son Louis (Lou-Lou). She was intimately connected 
with the Catholic Church, with the French clergy, and 
prevailed upon Napoleon to extend to the Pope con- 
siderations and regards that from a political standpoint 
were most injurious to France; and, like so many other 
female sovereigns of France, she had a genius for ig- 
noring the right man, and for encouraging the wrong 
minister. For even at that time there was no lack of 
information about the coming danger. Colonel Stoffel, 
who was the military attache in Berlin, never ceased 
informing the Emperor (whom he had aided in writing 
the life of Caesar) about the superior organization of 
the Prussian army. In fact, Stoffel had the clearest 
impression of the hopeless inferiority of the French 
army as against the army of Prussia. When the dis- 
aster deprived Napoleon of his throne, several of the 
most incisive reports of Stoffel to the Emperor on the 
Prussian army were found — unopened — in the bureau 
of the Emperor. In Parliament also, Adolphe Thiers 
repeatedly implored the Deputies to abstain from any 
hostility to Germany, and although Thiers's imprecations 
may have been somewhat interested, in that he did not 



210 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

want to increase the power of the opposition in Parlia- 
ment by encouraging their anti-Prussian policy, yet in 
the fervent and very statesmanlike speeches of Thiers, 
directed against the anti-Prussian politics of the French 
Parliament, there was a large element of honesty and 
truth. Everybody felt that Napoleon's mistake in 1866 
of having abstained from an attack on Prussia imme- 
diately after Sadowa had caused an irreparable loss of 
prestige to France, and more particularly to the Napo- 
leonic dynasty. The opposition in the French Parlia- 
ment constantly attacking Napoleon, and forcing him 
in the end to very broad and considerable concessions, 
positively refused to help him in the reconstruction of 
the army ; and there is now, in the light of the latest 
memoirs of that time, little doubt that the opposition is 
more directly responsible for the terrible military dis- 
asters of France in 1870 and 1871 than even Napoleon 
himself. By refusing to give any supply for the mili- 
tary force, the necessity of which Napoleon, Marshal 
Niel, and several other leading military officials had 
clearly seen and pressed upon the nation, the French 
Parliament increased the inferiority of France and so 
raised the boldness of Prussia, which, as we know, was 
most minutely informed about every public or secret 
move of the French Government and the French mili- 
tary authorities. 

In spite of the lack of any military reform Napoleon, 
or rather Eugenie, became more and more convinced 
that a war with Prussia was absolutely indispensable in 
order to recoup the prestige of the Emperor's reign, and 
the hopes of his son. Accordingly, a pretext was easily 
found, and that pretext was the well-known Hohenzollern 



THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 211 

question. One of the princes of the house of Hohenzol- 
lern, that is, related to the Prussian dynasty, was pro- 
posed as candidate for the Spanish throne, and Bismarck 
in the beginning acted as if he encouraged that candida- 
ture. The French Government affected to see in that 
move an attempt "to restore the Empire of Charles V." 
The very exaggeration lying in these words clearly 
shows that Napoleon and Eugenie were only trying to 
find a pretext to make war on Prussia. Nothing could 
be more ridiculous than to see in the candidature of a 
Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain, a serious 
attempt at restoring a universal Empire. The French 
Government, however, affected to be greatly agitated by 
that candidature, and finally Benedetti, the French am- 
bassador at Berlin, was despatched to interview King 
William of Prussia himself. King William readily ad- 
mitted that the candidature of the Hohenzollern prince 
ought to be, and was to be, dropped. Under ordinary 
circumstances, the incident would have ended there. 
However, Grammont, the French foreign minister, de- 
termined to bring about a rupture with Prussia. Con- 
vinced as he was that the Southern states of Germany 
would join France against Prussia ; confiding as he did 
in the absurd statement of Marshal Lebceuf, that the 
French army was completely ready " to the last button " ; 
confiding likewise in the conditional promise of Austria 
to join France and in a similar, if vague, promise on the 
part of Italy ; Grammont wanted to exercise pressure 
upon King William through Benedetti, to the effect that 
not only should King William undertake to discounte- 
nance a Hohenzollern candidature, but also that the 
King should give a formal promise never to entertain 



212 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

such a candidature in future. King William declined 
to give such a promise. The form in which he did that 
was neither offensive to France nor derogatory to his 
own honour. The interview between the King and 
Benedetti was at Ems, a watering-place on the Rhine. 
Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon, who had been anxiously 
watching the manoeuvres of Grammont, and were hoping 
for an immediate rupture of relations and outbreak of 
the war, on receiving the answer of King William given 
to Benedetti, learnt to their dismay that the answer was 
so worded as to avoid any great affront. At this critical 
moment Bismarck, by omitting certain words of the 
King's reply, and by abbreviating it in an artful manner, 
gave it the appearance of a most offensive declaration 
to France ; and by this Machiavellian manoeuvre, Bis- 
marck secured what he and his two colleagues had 'been 
waiting for, that is, an instantaneous declaration of war 
on the part of France ; for no sooner had the garbled 
reply reached Paris, than both Parliament and the Pari- 
sian people became frantic with indignation, and under 
the cries "d Berlin! a Berlin!" forced upon the Gov- 
ernment a declaration of war. 

This action of Bismarck, some twenty years later 
related by himself to an Austrian journalist, has been 
frequently held up as a specimen of his most ruthless 
and unrighteous policy. No doubt, in giving the King's 
reply a version calculated to outrage French dignity, 
Bismarck acted upon purely political, that is to say, un- 
sentimental principles. On the other hand the prov- 
ocation really had come from France; the war was 
inevitable; and both Bismarck and Moltke knew that 
the French army was then, and just then, in a state of in- 



THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 21 3 

feriority and unpreparedness, promising well for a rapid 
and complete victory of the Prussians. To neglect such 
a conjecture of circumstances, rightly seemed to Bismarck 
a failure in patriotism ; and from a strictly historical, 
that is, practical standpoint, one cannot but approve a 
diplomatic move that has secured for Germany complete 
peace and prosperity for now over thirty-four years ; and 
at the same time put the balance of Europe on a safer 
and steadier basis. 

Bismarck, who, as we have seen, used all his modera- 
tion in the moment of his wonderful triumph over 
Austria, now used all the energy and dash he was capa- 
ble of to precipitate a terrible conflict with France. In 
both cases he was guided by the soundest and coolest 
considerations of policy. In both cases he was right. 
The question of war or peace is one that most people 
are unable really to discuss ; for nothing short of a very 
complete or comprehensive knowledge of war gives us 
the means of placing the great question in its right per- 
spective. Such a knowledge of war is of very rare oc- 
currence. They who constantly preach peace and 
condemn men like Bismarck have not learnt the great 
lesson of war, that war in the right time with the right 
means saves many a nation sacrifices very much greater 
than those entailed by the war. One has only to com- 
pare the policy of Bismarck with that of Austria in 1870 
in order not only to approve of Bismarck's so-called 
Machiavellian manoeuvre, but to consider his whole policy 
as one eminently meant to secure the true benefits of 
peace. It is self-evident that Austria in 1870 ought to 
have joined France unconditionally. It is evident that 
Austria ought to have learnt, if not from the bygone 



214 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

events of her own history in the eighteenth century, 
at any rate from the palpable mistake of Napoleon in 
1866, that it was her duty to attack Germany in the 
East as soon as Germany invaded France in the West ; 
just as Napoleon in 1866 ought to have invaded 
Prussia in the West when Bismarck attacked Austria 
in the East. Instead of that, Austria — ever unready 
— abstained from joining in the colossal conflict. The 
Emperor Francis Joseph neglected what was then his 
chief duty — that is, to become a strong and faithful 
ally of the French ; to reduce the possible victories of 
Prussia ; to recoup his position and to raise Austria 
to the international position that she occupied in the 
eighteenth century, when Maria Theresa, in a spirit 
of infinitely greater statesmanship, never missed an 
opportunity of interfering in the great international 
affairs of Europe. The peaceful policy of the Emperor 
Francis Joseph in 1870 has, as we now know, been the 
death-blow of Austria-Hungary in her position as an 
international Power. Austria has at all times lived 
more by pressure from abroad than thanks to cohesion 
from the inside; and since 1870, when she exercised no 
pressure upon, nor received any from, the rest of Europe, 
she has necessarily drifted into interior anarchy, and 
has been the prey of the most unruly, aimless, and 
hopeless party struggles. 

The peaceful policy of Austria in 1870 has entailed 
upon her the greatest losses, economic, moral, and 
political ; losses infinitely greater than any loss she 
could have sustained in 1870 by joining the French 
against Prussia. 

The war between Prussia and France at once mani- 



THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 215 

fested the inner unity of the German nations ; for the 
Southern states in Germany — Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, 
and Baden — at once joined Prussia and the Northern 
states, and under the leadership of Moltke, of the 
Crown Prince Frederick, and of Prince Frederick 
Charles, the German armies invaded France, and in 
nearly every single battle worsted the French ; even 
when, as at Gravelotte, the Germans had not the 
superiority of numbers. It is needless to dwell here on 
the details of the war, the various tragic scenes of 
which are still within the memory of many. It is 
well known how absolutely unprepared the French 
were ; it is equally well known that while each indi- 
vidual German officer was full of the most independent 
and daring initiative, the French officers and generals, 
from Bazaine and Marshal MacMahon downwards, lost 
all initiative and every particle of that famous French 
resourcefulness which in 1859 na d carried Napoleon's 
army victoriously through the Italian campaign, al- 
though the French army, then as in 1870, was very 
sadly unprepared and ill-provided for. 

The most incapable of the French generals was 
Bazaine, the commander of Metz. At the first blush it 
appears inexplicable why the German generals, none 
of whom had seen or experienced a great war, except 
the war of 1866, which lasted only a few weeks, should 
prove so immeasurably superior to the French gen- 
erals, every one of whom had gone through numerous 
campaigns previous to 1870. In fact, it must be said 
that in 1870 theory proved infinitely superior to 
practice; and the German officers, mere theorists, so 
to speak, undid all the plans, practice, and routine of 



21 6 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

the French generals. The explanation of this remark- 
able puzzle may be found in the fact that the experi- 
ence of the French generals was great indeed, but it 
had been acquired, not in Europe and against Euro- 
pean armies so much as in Mexico, in Algiers, in 
China; that is, against nations of a civilization and 
science inferior to that of Europe. We have only 
lately seen that a war with an ever so small European 
nation is an affair of a totally different character from 
wars against black, yellow, or mixed races. The Ger- 
mans were prepared for that war, and for over two 
generations had studied all its possibilities in the 
minutest detail. 

After the terrible disaster of Sedan and Metz came 
the siege of Paris. The French, maddened by their un- 
precedented disasters, accepted for a time the guidance 
of Gambetta, a man of energy and insight, but one 
who lacked the more ruthless virtues of an efficient 
dictator. He was able to create new armies, to offer 
to the Germans a resistance on the Loire and in the 
north of France which in many ways was more efficient 
than that offered to the Germans by the old regular 
army of France. The Germans were, after October, 
1870, unable to repeat those wholesale captures of 
armies which characterized the first stage of their war 
with France ; yet Gambetta, it must now be said with 
regret, was not quite a match for the entirely different 
situation created in France through the German victo- 
ries. Not a Gambetta, a Danton was needed. Gam- 
betta, who rightly pursued the policy of resistance to 
the bitter end, ought to have done away with all the 
elements of possible opposition to his right plans. 



THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 217 

We now know from German military writers that 
the Germans could not have continued the war for 
another two or three months, after January, 1871. 
The winter was terribly cold ; Bismarck, as he tells us 
himself in his memoirs, spent sleepless nights in appre- 
hensions of international interference ; the financial 
resources of Germany began to be exhausted, and a 
popular and implacable war, in the manner of the 
Spanish resistance to Napoleon, would have forced the 
German army to retreat, and might possibly have de- 
prived them of Lorraine, if not of Alsace too. However, 
in the French nation, as usual, there were strong parties 
filled by nothing but personal ambition, who, in the 
collapse of the old regime, welcomed an opportunity 
for raising themselves into power. Of these parties 
Adolphe Thiers was the head. He wanted peace, and 
peace by all means, for he knew that peace meant his 
own coming to power. He had been unsuccessful in 
his long and wearisome travels to the various courts 
of Europe, asking for help and intervention. Bismarck 
— and that is his greatest diplomatic feat — had so 
completely isolated France that neither England nor 
Russia, let alone Austria, seriously thought of inter- 
vening ; although, as we have seen, such intervention 
was to the vital interest of Austria, and, as we now 
see, would have been no mistake on the part of Eng- 
land. Surely it would have paid England to retard 
somewhat, by intervention, the precocious growth of 
German ascendency. However, Bismarck was quite 
successful, and peace on terms proposed by Thiers 
was impossible. Peace was Thiers's great stepping- 
stone to power; that alone explains why Gambetta 



2l8 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

ought to have despatched Thiers in one way or 
another, so as to carry out Gambetta's own plan of 
unflinching resistance. Gambetta, however, lacked the 
power and deep if cruel insight of Danton ; and, after 
the occupation of Paris, France was obliged to accept, 
in 1 871, the terms of peace dictated by Bismarck at 
Frankfort-on-the-Main, by the terms of which France 
lost Alsace altogether, and the portion of Lorraine 
inhabited by German-speaking people; and, more- 
over, was obliged to pay an indemnity of .£200,000,000 
sterling (1,000,000,000 dollars). The real cost of the 
war to France was 5,000,000,000 dollars, and but for 
the immense wealth of the country the war would 
have ruined it financially as it did politically. 

There can be no doubt that the terrible military 
disasters inflicted on France by the Germans have 
done to that old and historic country of Europe an in- 
calculable harm ; harm, it must be admitted, incom- 
parably more severe than any losses that a continuance 
of the war after February, 1871, could have possibly 
brought upon France. On the other hand, the Germans 
at Versailles — that is, in the very palace of Louis 
XIV., who in the seventeenth century had so deeply 
humiliated the Prussian Elector and the Germans gen- 
erally — constituted themselves into the German Em- 
pire. King William of Prussia accepted the new 
dignity rather reluctantly; and there were great diffi- 
culties about the title, which was finally settled as King 
William, German Emperor. Thus the great political 
concepts of Bismarck, to bring about the unity of Ger- 
many by a successful war with France, rather than by 
negotiations and treaties with and between German 



THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 2IO, 

sovereigns themselves, was completely realized ; and 
Germany, that had hitherto been a lax and inefficient 
conglomeration of small and big sovereignties, was now 
launched on a great career of political and commercial 
prosperity, and is now attempting to become a world- 
power. 

The fate of Napoleon is well known. Like his uncle, 
the great Napoleon, he repaired to England and died in 
exile. The great Napoleon wanted to accomplish too 
much and failed ; Napoleon III. wanted to accomplish 
too little and failed. The great Napoleon obeyed the 
dictates of his own vast mind ; Napoleon III. obeyed 
the dictates of an ambitious and intellectually inferior 
woman. France herself was in a desperate position. 
The indemnity she was able to pay off very soon ; but 
the terrible reaction from her dreams of glory, from 
her conceit, from her irregular ambition and disorga- 
nized home policy, was the most appalling that has ever 
come over any modern nation. She had lost all pres- 
tige in the eyes of her contemporaries ; from having 
been the leading nation in Europe she sank down to a 
second-rate and third-rate Power. Yet people were 
mistaken in considering France lost and fallen forever. 
Military defeats have as yet not really ruined a great 
nation. A nation worsted in fight may lose much, but 
she is sure to recover. It is the nation that does not 
fight, like Austria, that loses all the forces of possible 
recovery ; because, like nature, mankind is made by 
constant fight, and a sentimental and effeminate desire 
for peace is the forerunner of a nation's complete ex- 
tinction. 



EPILOGUE 

FROM a consideration of the period we have just 
traversed, it is evident that in European history 
as well as in the history of the nations dependent on 
Europe or Europeans, a few but very incisive changes 
have altered the physiognomy of the political world. 
In the eighteenth century Europe consisted of a chaos 
of so-called enclaves ; that is, no single monarchy or 
republic on the continent consisted of a continuous 
territory. The territory of each state was broken into 
and interrupted, as it were, by possessions belonging 
to another state ; so that Prussia, for instance, had 
territory straggling over various latitudes east and west 
of the Elbe, all over North Germany. Austria had 
absolutely no territorial continuity. The great wars 
from 1740 to 181 5 have very considerably simplified the 
map of Europe. At the present day the forty-six sov- 
ereign states of Europe have each of them a continuous 
and, so to speak, self-contained territory. This fact is 
of the utmost importance in international policy. As 
long as the various states had territories rounded off in 
a most primitive fashion, or not at all, international wars 
were matters of necessity. The interests of Austria, 
for instance, were as great and as vital on the Escaut 
River in Belgium, as on the Po, or on the Middle Rhine. 
Any move on the part of the French, the Dutch, the 
English, the Italian, or German sovereigns that touched 



EPILOGUE 221 

upon those territories, gave rise in Vienna to great anxi- 
eties and diplomatic countermoves. At present this is 
no longer the case. Unless some very powerful motive 
comes into play, the several states of Europe have no 
proper reason to start international wars; and as a 
matter of history, there has been no international war 
in Europe since 1815. It is only owing to the complete 
neglect of history that we are still constantly being 
treated to predictions of international wars in Europe. 
There is, it must be admitted, one possibility for such 
an international war, and that is the alleged disruption 
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so readily predicted 
by well-informed journalists, after the death of the pres- 
ent Emperor-King. However, it may be submitted, 
that Austria, like France, has in the last one hundred 
and sixty years been constantly declared to be on the 
verge of extinction. Austria-Hungary is no nearer her 
disruption now than she was in 1740. The Powers that 
keep Austria from within are somewhat weakened ; on 
the other hand, the Powers that keep it from without 
are so great and so conscious of the need of Austria for 
the balance of politics in Europe, that Austria will in 
the worst case survive, owing to the same reasons by 
which Saxony or Bavaria has been enabled to weather 
all the storms of inner corruption or foreign attacks. 

It may therefore be taken for granted that interna- 
tional wars in Europe have been rendered very unlikely, 
not to say impossible, by the gigantic fights of the 
eighteenth century up to. 18 15. 

In addition to this, the most salient and important 
result of those much-maligned wars of the eighteenth 
century, there is another, and in its way almost equally 



222 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

important, result which the eighteenth century was con- 
sciously and unconsciously fighting for, and which in 
the nineteenth century has come to be one of the 
factors of history — we mean the idea of nationalism. 
The nineteenth century is the age of the still higher 
national differentiation of Europe. Each of the nu- 
merous little and great nations of Europe, far from 
dropping their various languages, customs, mental atti- 
tudes, political ambitions, etc., have in the course of the 
nineteenth century more and more accentuated all their 
differences, so that in the southeast of Europe — in 
Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Macedonia, 
Greece, as well as in the north — in Denmark, in Nor- 
way, in Sweden, and in other parts of Europe — we 
have now to deal with full-fledged political individuali- 
ties, each of them based on a most determined idea of 
fighting for its own nationality. The process going on 
in Europe is, it may be seen, the very reverse of that 
which had been going on in America. In spite of the 
unprecedented immigration of Europeans to America 
during the nineteenth century, the American people 
show socially, economically, politically, and mentally, 
the most astounding homogeneity. All over the United 
States there is one language and one description of 
mind, of manners, customs, views. In Europe, while 
the old lack of territorial uniformity has been remedied 
to a large extent, the lack of national unity has been 
going on increasingly, and we may now indeed say of 
Europe that it is a greater Hellas. As in the times of 
the ancient Greeks, small Greece or Sicily contained 
hundreds of autonomous, absolutely different, hostile, 
and mutually irreconcilable city-states, so Europe is 



EPILOGUE 223 

based on a wholesale diversity of interests, views, lan- 
guages, laws, and customs. 

This immense difference between nation and nation 
in Europe has produced in Europe a number of inter- 
esting and important literatures ; it has stimulated into 
life ever new modes of thought ; ever new arts and in- 
ventions; ever new forms of music; of amusement; in 
short, of every form of intellectual and emotional life. 
Considering these beneficial results, it is certainly not 
desirable that Europe should cease from cultivating its 
differences more than its affinities. Historically speak- 
ing, the rise of a United States of Europe is out of the 
question. Military efforts made for that purpose, either 
by Charles V. in the sixteenth century ; by Louis XIV. 
in the seventeenth century ; or by Napoleon in the nine- 
teenth century, have all completely failed. On the other 
hand, the rise of such a United States of Europe from 
below, from the mutual assimilation of the nations, is 
evidently an impossibility. 

Europe has proved a more difficult problem than either 
the philosophic thinkers or the great men of action of 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could foresee. 
Europe to-day is neither Russian nor Republican, as Na- 
poleon is credited with predicting. Europe is neither 
entirely Protestant nor entirely Catholic. In Europe 
neither the Germanic nor the Latin races, let alone the 
Slav races, dominate politics. The absorption of Europe 
by the Slav races, so confidently predicted in the fifties 
and sixties of the nineteenth century, has not been real- 
ized in the least. The economic absorption of Europe 
at the hands of America, predicted with equal confidence 
by many an American and European, will prove as f alii- 



224 FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE 

ble as was the prediction of the religious absorption of 
Europe by Protestantism ; or the political absorption of 
Europe by the French. The Latin "races" — and 
most of all the French and the Italians — are to-day in 
a condition ready for some of the greatest problems of 
humanity. Amongst the Teutonic people the Germans 
are undoubtedly very powerful ; on the other hand, the 
Austrian Germans are as decadent for the time being as 
are, amongst the Latin races, the Spanish. 

It is high time that people studying history give up 
the untenable idea of " race." In Europe, at any rate, 
history is not made by " races," but, in addition to the 
constant influences of geo-politics, by the mental vigour 
and the moral grit of nations. The Russians are crippled 
by their church — the Greek Orthodox Church — very 
much more than by their "racial" qualities; and the 
Italians, although of a different "race" from that of 
the Russians, are handicapped by the hostile influence 
of the Pope and the Catholic Church, infinitely more 
than by their " racial " deficiencies. Europe, like Hellas, 
is influenced to an incomparably higher degree by intel- 
lect and character, than by ethnographic or physiological 
qualities of the nations. 

There is little doubt that on the foundations of public 
and private life, laid during the period which we have 
been studying, Europe will continue to rear another 
fabric of real civilization ; which, if not essentially higher 
than that left us by the immortal efforts of the Greeks 
and the Romans, will at any rate permit a greater num- 
ber of people to share in its benefits. 



INDEX 



Abercromby, disaster of, 87. 

Aboukir Bay, battle of, 64, 87. 

Abscisses and ordinate in history, 9. 

Absolutism: of European sovereigns, 
109; reestablishment of, 128; intro- 
duction of, 137. 

Acre, Napoleon's failure at, 64. 

Adair, James, and the hinterland, 10. 

Adrianople, treaty of, 142. 

Agincourt and Waterloo, 124. 

Aiguillon, Due d', and abolition of 
ancien regime, 36. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, Congress at, 134, 135. 

Albert, Archduke, commands in Italy, 
204. 

Albuera and Salamanca, 89. 

Alembert, d', 18. 

Alexander I.: and Napoleon, 59; 
dismay of (1805), 77; partition 
with Napoleon, 82; and Austria, 
109; and England, ib. ; courts 
French alliance, ib. ; Oriental plans 
of, ib. ; the saviour of France, ib.; 
vengeance of, ib. ; and Metternich, 
attitude to France, 128 ; and Talley- 
rand, 129; and Polish question, 
132, 158; aims of, 134; and Con- 
stantinople, ib.', and American 
enterprise, 135; at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
ib. ; wins French friendship, ib.; 
and popular liberty, ib.; and 
''Holy Alliance," 137; severe 
measures of, ib.; ideal of, 138. 

Alexander the Great and Napoleon, 

5°- 

Algarve on strategic line, 88. 

Algiers: and Charles X., 156; French 
conquest of, 160; French experi- 
ence gained in, 216. 



Alleghany Mountains, 9; vide hinter- 
land. 

Alsace, allies expelled from, 45. 

Altenstein and Hegel, 149; and Prus- 
sian efficiency, 193. 

Althusius and the Encydopedie, 19. 

Alvinczy, defeat of, 61. 

America: homogeneity of, 30, 78, 222; 
and British fleet, 102; fixed char- 
acteristics of, 119; and Hegel's sys- 
tem, 149; influence of Comte in, 
167, 168; influence of European 
changes on, 173; South, Italian 
emigration to, 183. 

American: Independence, war of, 
1-25; colonies lost through action 
of Europe, 6 ; discontent, causes of, 
ib. ; Independence, assumed ideal- 
ism of, 7; army, disabilities of, 22; 
war, geography of, 23; war, strat- 
egy of, ib. ; Revolution, not social, 
120; enterprise and Alexander I., 

135. 

Americans: and idealism, 7; and 
Lafayette, 74. 

Amiens, Peace of, 72. 

Ancien regime: a cause of revolution, 
28 sqq. ; abolition of, in Hungary, 
and elsewhere, 36, 161; and spirit 
of the times, 36; return to, impos- 
sible, 52; attempt by Charles to 
restore the, 157. 

Aranda and Beaumarchais, 21. 

Arcole: Napoleon at, 50; victory of, 
61. 

Armada, battle of the, 182. 

Army and Robespierre, 47. 

Arras, appreciation of, 46. 

Arrigo de la Rocca, 51. 



225 



226 



INDEX 



Asia, Napoleon's scheme to conquer, 
85, 86. 

Aspern campaign, effect of, 96. 

Assemblee: Constituante constituted, 
35; Nationale constituted, ib. ; 
and general principles, 36; Mira- 
beau and Rousseau, ib., 37. 

Astorga: Napoleon at, 94. 

Astronomy at Paris, 166. 

Athens and Themistocles, 193. 

Attila and Duke of Brunswick, 42. 

Auerbach and Goethe, 28. 

Auerstaedt, battle of, 80. 

Augier, strategy of, in Italy, 61. 

Austerlitz: Napoleon at, 59; battle 
of, 70, 77; and Trafalgar, 72. 

Australia and a hinterland, 9. 

Austria: no territorial unity in, 5; 
and Bismarck, 13, 18; and Seven 
Years' War, 14; hostile to revolu- 
tionary ideas, 40, 41, 128, 136; 
French attack on, 60; Italian pos- 
sessions of, 60, 177; reaches the 
Adriatic, 62 ; peace with, at Campo 
Formio, 62, 192; defeated at Aus- 
terlitz, 72; and Russia in Danube 
valley, 75: treaty of Pressburg, 77; 
conquest of, 80; proper policy of, 
82; and England, coalition of, 94; 
humiliations of, 95; defeated by 
Napoleon, 96, 97; a second-rate 
power, 97, 206; and treaty of 
Schonbrunn, 97; and Tirolese re- 
sistance, 98; and French crown, 
99; house of, unlucky, 100; re- 
peated risings of, 103; joins the 
Coalition, 107, 122; joins Prussia 
and Russia, 108; and Napoleon, 
interests coincident, 108, 114; and 
Prussia, natural antagonists, 108, 
109; cautious action of, 115; and 
Prussia, rivals for supremacy, 130; 
press gagged by, 137; paralyzed by 
reaction, 138; appeals to Russia, 
163; greatness and decline of, 172; 
and Italian unity, 176; arrange- 
ment to attack, 179; promise of 
Napoleon III. to attack, ib.; cedes 
Lombardy, 180; defeat of (1859), 



ib.; makes peace at Villa Franca, 
ib.; retains Venetian territory, ib.; 
and Cavour, 181; defeats Victor 
Emmanuel, ib. ; and Prussia, rivalry 
of, 189; prominent in German Con- 
federation, ib.; lacking in assimi- 
lative power, 190, 192; effects of 
loss of Silesia on, 191, 192; terri- 
tories of, in 1 741, ib.; disunion of, 
192; an unsuitable political centre, 
192, 193; and the Hungarians, 194, 
195; apparent subordination of 
Prussia to, 1 94 ; defeated by France, 
ib.; loss of Italian territory of, ib.; 
and Prussia members of German 
Confederacy, 201 ; and Schleswig- 
Holstein, ib. ; Bismarck's war with, 
ib.; compromised in Danish war, 
ib. ; and Prussia administer Schles- 
wig-Hoistein, 202; and treaty of 
Gastein, ib.; considers herself 
wronged (1866), 203; Moltke con- 
fident of victory over, ib. ; simul- 
taneously attacked in Lombardy 
and Bohemia, 203; joined by South 
German States, 206; success of, in 
Italy, ib. ; and Peace of Prague, ib. ; 
loses Venetian territory, ib.; mis- 
taken policy of, 214; Russia, Eng- 
land, possible French allies, 217; 
and France, comparative state of, 
219; enclaves of, 220; enclaves of, 
on Escaut, ib.; enclaves of, on 
Po, ib. ; enclaves of, on Rhine, ib.; 
and the balance of power, 221. 

Austria-Hungary: and her peace 
policy, 79; revolution in, 160, 161; 
fall of, as an international Power, 
214; disruption of, prophesied, 221. 

Austrian army: badly generalled, 
180; disunion of, 203; old-fash- 
ioned rifles of, ib. 

Austrian Italy, failure of revolution 
in, 164. 

Austrian: Succession, war of, inter- 
national, 5; alliance, disastrous to 
France, 15, 99; statesmen, char- 
acter of, 59, 130; diplomacy, dis- 
cussion of, 97; political writers im- 



INDEX 



227 



prisoned, 133; prisons filled, ib.; 
revolution, failure of, 164; Empire, 
fall of, 172 ; Germans and Spanish, 
224. 
Austrians: on the Rhine, 42; de- 
feated at Jemmapes, 43 ; and peace 
of Luneville, 67 ; defeated at Hohen- 
linden, ib. ; and Mack at Ulm, 76; 
and allies compel Napoleon's ab- 
dication, 90; under Schwarz- 
enberg, southern route of, 115; 
expelled from Hungary, 163. 

Bach and Schumann, 146; tardy 
recognition of, 153. 

Bach-Hussars and Hungarian lib- 
erty, 164. 

Bach, Minister, and Hungarian lib- 
erty, 164. 

Baden: and Napoleon's code, 70; 
apprehensions of, 130; Wiirtem- 
berg and Baden, 207, 208; joins 
Prussia, 215. 

Balkan invaded by Nicholas I., 141. 

Baltic, Prussia and the North Sea, 201. 

Balzac: appreciation of, 152-154; 
sums up modern humanity, 152; 
analytical powers of, 153; and Na- 
poleon, ib. ; greatness of, not recog- 
nized by French, ib. ; inventor of 
no genre, ib.; a creator of types, 
154; imaginative powers of, ib. 

Bamberg, Bishop, possessions of, 186. 

Bannockburn: Scotch pride in, 87; 
and Waterloo, 124. 

Banque de France created by Napo- 
leon, 69. 

Baring en La Haie Sainte, 122. 

Barras: and Josephine, 60; and Na- 
poleon's first command, ib. 

Basle, treaty of, 47. 

Basques, the, and St. Ignatius, 51. 

Bastille, the, demolished, 32, 36. 

Bavaria: no territorial unity in, 5; 
Napoleon's map of, 54; becomes a 
kingdom, 77; less useful than Po- 
land, 81 ; friendly to Napoleon, 93 ; 
and Napoleon, interests coinci- 
dent, 114; apprehensions of, 130; 



left in statu quo, 131 ; defeat of, in 
1866,207; Wurtemberg and Baden, 
207, 208; Bismarck's treatment of, 
discussed, 208; joins Prussia, 215; 
Saxony and Austria, 221. 

Bavarians, French and Magyars in- 
vade Germany, 91. 

Baylen, French army surrenders at, 
92. 

Bazaine: incapacity of, at Metz, 215; 
want of initiative of, ib. 

Beaulieu separated from Colli, 61. 

Beaumarchais, 20-22, 24: neglect 
of, 2; and Aranda, 21; and Ver- 
gennes, ib.; at Le Havre, ib.; and 
Arthur Lee, 22; and de Kalb, ib.; 
and Silas Deane, ib.; and Steuben, 
ib.; and Franklin, ib. 

Beethoven and Schumann, 146. 

Behar, 12. 

Belgian independence, attitude of 
Powers to, 176. 

Belgium: and France, 37; occupa- 
tion of, 43 ; allies expelled from, 45 ; 
and July Revolution, 156. 

Belle- Alliance, Napoleon at, 127. 

Bern, General, 161. 

Benedek: attacked in northeast 
Bohemia, 204; commands in Bo- 
hemia, ib.; knowledge of Lom- 
bardy, ib.; strategic mistakes of, 
205; defeated at Sadowa, ib. 

Benedetti: despatched to interview 
William I., 211 ; and William I. at 
Ems, 212. 

Bengal, 12. 

Berezina, disaster on the, 104. 

Bergen, battle of, 65. 

Berkeley, philosophy of, 148. 

Berlin: and Bourges, 38; entered 
by Napoleon, 80; Hegel, Professor 
at, 148. 

Bernard, Little St., and Napoleon, 57. 

Berthier and Russian campaign, 103. 

Beust, Count, and Bismarck, 194. 

Bill of Rights and Idealism, 7. 

Biology at Paris, 166. 

Bismarck: contrast to Chatham, 13; 
and Austria, 13, 18, 213; and Na- 



228 



INDEX 



poleon, 53; debt of, to Napoleon, 
68; inner voices of, 101; criticism 
of Turks, 140; genius of, 1 73 ; and 
Cavour, 175, 176, 182; and Ger- 
man unity, 176, 196, 207, 208; in- 
fluence of, 194; a North German, 
195; appreciation of, 194, 200; a 
good linguist, 195; and political 
technique, ib.; solid information 
of, 196; admiration of, for Deak 
and Cavour, 197; and Prussian 
foreign policy, ib.; real greatness 
of, 198; adversaries of, ib.; courage 
of, ib. ; luck of, ib. ; and Richelieu 
and Mazarin, 198, 199; attachment 
of William I. to, 199; occasional re- 
luctance of William to follow, ib.; 
wise moderation of, ib. ; and Sach- 
politik, ib.; French and English 
conception of, ib. ; friend of Motley, 
ib. ; humor of, ib.; objectiveness 
of, ib.; and Moltke, 200; changes 
the character of diplomacy, ib. ; 
frankness of, ib. ; causes of success 
of, 201 ; compromises Austria in 
Danish war, ib. ; great triumphs of, 
ib.; anticipates friction re Schles- 
wig-Holstein, 202; and treaty of 
Gastein, ib.; forces Danes to sub- 
mit, ib. ; opposed by Prussian 
statesmen, ib.; and Prussian ad- 
versaries, 203; unpopularity of, 
ib.; treaty of, with Italy, 204; op- 
poses Prussian entrance into Venice, 
205; prepares for Franco-German 
war, ib.; statesmanship of, ib.; 
fears a French attack on Rhine, 
206 ; establishes North German con- 
federacy, ib. ; threatens suicide, ib. ; 
and Count Beust, ib. ; and Schmer- 
ling, ib.; reproached by modern 
historians, 207; and treatment of 
South German states discussed, 208 ; 
treatment of Bavaria discussed, ib.; 
and Hohenzollern candidate, 211; 
Moltke and Roon, 212; tampers 
with William I.'s reply, ib. ; Machia- 
vellian manoeuvres of, 212, 213; 
policy of, to France, 213; afraid of 



international interference, ib.; suc- 
cessful isolation of France, 217; 
projects of, realized, 218, 219; 
terms of peace, 218. 

Black Forest, 76. 

Bland, Richard, on constitution, 8. 

Blenheim: battle of, 25, 56; cam- 
paign, problem of, ib. 

Bliicher, 82; and Napoleon, 59; and 
Napoleon's fall, 73; and Welling- 
ton defeat Napoleon, 87; defeated 
by Napoleon, 112; defeated at 
Ligny, 124-126; and Wellington, 
junction of, necessary, 125 sgq. ; at 
Wavre, 126, 127; defeated by 
Napoleon at Ligny, ib.; pursued 
by Grouch} 7 , ib. ; receives no help 
from Wellington, 126; arrival of, 
127. 

Boerne and the French Revolution, 
28. 

Bohemia: Albert's knowledge of, 204, 
205; Benedek commands in, 205. 

Bohemians and White Mountain, 24. 

Borodino, battle of, 103. 

Bosnia won by Austria, 191. 

Boulogne, Napoleon at, 75. 

Bourbons: and Habsburgs, 15; 
power of the, over bourgeoisie, 117; 
blindness of the, 120; unadapta- 
bility of the, ib. ; vide Louis XV. 

Bourgeois and the salons, 31. 

Bourges, the geo-political centre of 
Europe, 37. 

Boutiquiers, une nation de, 55. 

Brazil, influence of Comte on, 168. 

Brentz, reforms of, and German 
unity, 194. 

Brest entered by French convoy, 

47- 
Brienne, battle of, 115. 
British: army and Napoleon, 85; 

fleet in America, 102; battalions 

and French, 123; debt to Prussia 

acknowledged, ib. 
Bruce and Napoleon, 52. 
Brumaire 18th, 66. 
Brune, victory of, at Bergen, 65. 
Brunswick, Duke of: and Attila, 42; 



INDEX 



229 



and Coblentz proclamation, ib. ; 
and Genghis Khan, ib. 

Brunswick, Prince of, at Valmy, 38. 

Buckle and French Revolution, 27. 

Buechner, Carl, teacher of material- 
ism, 170. 

Bukovina won by Austria, 191. 

Bulgaria: rise of, 173; nationalism 
in, 222. 

Bullialdus and planetary system, 4. 

Biilow: and Napoleon's fall, 73; de- 
feats Ney and Oudinot, 112; at 
Chapelle St. Lombard, 127. 

Bureaucracies, conservatism of, 204. 

Burgoyne, surrender of, 23. 

Burgundians, vacillation of, 74. 

Burke: diplomacy, n; policy of, 
discussed, 1 2 ; blindness of, 36 ; 
condemns the Revolution, ib. 

Byron, Lord: a Philhellene, 141; 
resourcefulness of, 144; morbid 
creations of, 144; amours of, 145. 

Byzantines in Constantinople, 134. 

Cadiz, victorious march of French to, 

136, 137- 

Caesar and Napoleon, 50. 

Calonne: removes abuses, 27; and 
Marie Antoinette, ^^; and convo- 
cation of orders, 34. 

Campo Formio, peace of, 62, 192. 

Canada: and a hinterland, 9; ac- 
quisition of, 17. 

Cannonade of Valmy, 38, 43. 

Cape Henry, decisive engagements off, 
23, 24. 

Capodistrias, minister of Alexander L, 

135- 
Carbonari, the, 136, 176. 
Carinthia, Napoleon in, 61. 
Carneola, Napoleon in, 61. 
Carnot's plan of attack (1796), 60. 
Carthage and Rome, 25. 
Carver, Jonathan, and the hinterland, 

10. 
Casimir-Perier, Louis Philippe yields 

to, 159. 
Castanos and Napoleon's fall, 73; 

captures French army, 92. 



Castiglione, victory of, 61. 

Catharine the Great, hostile to Revo- 
lution, 40. 

Catholic Church: ally of the Habs- 
burgs, 190; centralization of the, ib. 

Catholicism : centrifugal tendencies 
of, 208; in Italy, 224. 

Caucasus, 102. 

Cavaignac, Ledru-Rollin, and La- 
martine, 160. 

Cavour: genius of, 173; and Bis- 
marck, 175, 176, 182, 197; policy of, 
175 sqg. ; and Garibaldi, ib.; and 
the Powers, 176; and Italian pa- 
triots, 176, 181; secures French 
support, 176; hostility of, to Aus- 
tria, 177; minister of King of Sar- 
dinia, ib. ; relations of, with Powers, 
ib.; secret alliance of, and Napo- 
leon III., ib.; triumph of, due to 
Orsini, ib.; meets Napoleon III. 
at Plombieres, 179; deceives Na- 
poleon III., 180; secures English 
sympathy, ib. ; death of, 181; diffi- 
culties of (i860), ib.; wise policy, 
proof of, ib. 

"Cette armee est a moil" 77. 

Chamfort on history, 134. 

Charles, Archduke of Austria: Na- 
poleon's estimate of, 55; advice of, 
95; defeats the French, 96; de- 
feated by Napoleon, ib., 97. 

Charles I. of England, desertion of 
London by, 41. 

Charles II. of England: and Par- 
liamentary parties, 157; and Louis- 
Philippe, 158. 

Charles IV. of Spain: and Joseph 
Bonaparte, 92; suggests French 
alliance, 94. 

Charles V. Emperor: and Napoleon, 
49; coalition against, 60, 106; tries 
to unite Europe, 223. 

Charles X. of France: a reactionary 
king, 141; successful foreign policy 
of, ib.; precipitates Revolution, 
156; and Algiers, ib.; and liberty 
of the Press, 157; and Turkey, ib. ; 
July ordinances of, ib. 



230 



INDEX 



Charles, Prince Frederick, invades 
France, 215. 

Chartes, Ecole des, 151. 

Chateaubriand, prose style of, 143. 

Chatham : diplomacy, 1 1 ; policy of, 
discussed, 12; and Bismarck, 13; 
hostility to France, 14, iS; blind- 
ness of, 15; and Dunkirk, 1 7 ; disas- 
ter of Chatham's son, 87. 

Chatillon-sur-Seine, negotiations at, 

"5- 

China, French experience gained in, 
216. 

Chios, inhabitants of, massacred, 141. 

Chopin, Frederick: appreciation of, 
146-148; originality of, 146; sim- 
plicity of method, 147; widespread 
admiration for, 146, 147; and 
Georges Sand, 147; and Polish 
misery, ib.; and Mozart, ib.; and 
Heine, 147, 148. 

Christianity and Sunday, 8. 

Church possessions in Germany, 186. 

Cis-Leithania, an ill-balanced polity, 
164. 

Civil War: in England, 38; and 
witch massacres, 42. 

Classicism, appreciation of, 143. 

Classical music, diatonic, 145. 

Classical writers, heroines of, 145. 

Clinton in New York, 23. 

Clubs abolished, 132. 

Coalition, 60; against Napoleon, 
Pan-European, 107 sqq. ; vide 
Napoleon. 

Code civil of Napoleon, 69. 

Code criminel of Napoleon, 69. 

Colbert, centralizations of, 31. 

Colenso and Waterloo, 124. 

Colli separated from Beaulieu, 61. 

Cologne Archbishop, possessions of, 
186. 

Colonials and Encyclopaedists, 18. 

Colonists and settlement beyond the 
Alleghany, 10. 

Columbus, inner voices of, 101. 

Comedie Humaine: an expression 
of modern Europe, 153; and Divina 
Commedia, ib. 



Comite de Salut Public, a dictatorship, 
45- 

Comte: and Religion of Humanity, 
166; Cours de Philosophic Positive 
of, ib. ; on metaphysics, ib.; and 
hierarchy of sciences, 167; Law of 
the three Stages of, ib. ; influence 
of, in England, America, and the 
Continent, 167, 168; and Herbert 
Spencer, 168; and Stuart Mill, ib.; 
influence of, on Brazil, ib. ; influ- 
ence of, on South America, ib. ; the 
apostle of Science, 168, 169. 

Comte, Auguste, appreciation of, 167, 
168. 

Condorcet, a political writer, 18, 31. 

Congress: at Erfurt, 8^; at Vienna, 
121, 128, 177, 192; voting at, 129; 
Talleyrand master of, 130, 131; 
results of, 131; the dancing, ib.; 
and police persecution, 132 sqq. ; 
and reaction, ib. ; unwritten legis- 
lation of, ib.; at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
134; at Karlsbad, ib.; at Laibach, 
ib. ; at Troppau, ib. ; at Verona, 
ib.; and suppression of popular 
liberty, 135. 

Congresses, aims of monarchs at, 
134 sqq. 

Constant the Great, influence of, 9. 

Constantinople: wanted by Czars, 
J 34» I 35 5 designs of Alexander I. 
on, 134; under the Turks, ib.', 
under the Byzantines, ib.; value 
of, exaggerated, ib.; the imperial 
capital, 135. 

Control Social, Du, 19. 

"Convention": excesses of the, 44; 
and education, 45 ; and metric sys- 
tem, ib. ; and religious toleration, 
ib. ; and reorganization, ib. ; work 
of, completed by Napoleon, ib.; 
anticipates Napoleon, 68. 

" Conventionnels," death of, 47. 

Corday, Charlotte, appreciation of, 
46. 

Comiche, Napoleon at the, 57. 

Cornwallis in New York, 23 ; in York- 
town, ib. 



INDEX 



231 



Corsica: and Napoleon, 50; and 
France, 51: and Genoa, ib.; his- 
tory of, ib.; occupation of, by 
French, ib. 

Cossacks harass French army, 104. 

Cracow, a republic, 132. 

Craonne, battle of, 115, 124. 

Crecy and Waterloo, 124. 

Crimea: campaign, in the, 177; 
troops sent by Cavour to the, 177, 
178. 

Crimean War not international, 4. 

Croatians called in by Ferdinand, 1 63 ; 
under Jellachich invade Hungary, 
ib. 

Cromwell and Napoleon, 53, 62. 

Cuesta and Wellington win Talavera, 
strategical defeat, 88. 

Cunette, La, 17. 

Czars desire Constantinople, 134, 135. 

Dalmatia ceded to Austria, 62. 
Danes forced to submit, 202. 
Dante, Divina Commedia of, 153. 
Danton: appreciation of, 46; death 

of, 47; and Gambetta, 216, 218. 
Danube valley: Moreau in the, 60; 

campaign of the, 95, 96. 
Danubian provinces, rise of, 173. 
Darwin, Charles: appreciation, of, 

169; Origin of Species, ib.; the 

apostle of science, ib.; caution of, 

170. 
Dauphine, 31. 
Deak, Francis: unifies Hungary, 173; 

admiration of Bismarck for, 197. 
Deane, Silas, and Beaumarchais, 

91, 22. 

Decentralization encouraged by em- 
perors, 186. 

Dego, battle of, 61. 

Denmark: war with, 201; national- 
ism in, 222. 

Dennewitz, battle of, 113. 

Desaix: and Marengo, 24; Egyp- 
tian campaign of, 64 ; and Grouchy, 
67 ; death of, ib. 

Descartes and an infinitesimal calcu- 
lus, 85. 



Desmoulins, Camille, 44, 46. 

Deutschthum, 187. 

Diderot, 18. 

Diet of German Confederation, 131; 
in Metternich's hands, 132; cur- 
tailing of the, 137. 

Dillingen, 76. 

Directoire, introduction of the, 47. 

Directors: Italian policy of, 60; 
Egyptian schemes of, 63; jealous 
of Napoleon, ib. 

Divina Commedia and La Comedie 
Humaine, 153. 

Doleances: neglect of, 30, 31 ; cahiers 
de, 35. 

Domremy, Jeanne d'Arc of, 74. 

Doniol, H., Histoire de la participa- 
tion . . .,3. 

Don Juan, a national creation, 153. 

Draper on Evolution, 170. 

Dresden, Napoleon at, 59, 112. 

Dumouriez at Valmy, 38, 43; and 
War Party, 41. 

Dunkirk and Chatham, 17. 

Dupont, surrender of, 92. 

Dutch: revolt of the, 38; and Eng- 
lish interests opposed, 93; Revolu- 
tion not social, 120; on Waterloo, 
123. 

Eckmuhl, battle of, 96. 
Edinburgh and Bourges, 37. 
Educational reforms of Napoleon, 69. 
" Egalite," father of Louis-Philippe, 

i57- 

Egypt: and a hinterland, 9; and 
Syria, invasion of, 63; importance 
of, ib.; Leibniz, and Louis XIV., 
ib.; organization of, by Napoleon, 
64; Mehmed Ali, governor of, 141. 

Egyptian Civil Service, 64. 

Elba, Napoleon prisoner in, 117. 

Elbe, the: and Kiel, connected by a 
canal, 201 ; enclaves on the, 220. 

Elizabeth and Prussia, 16. 

Emigration, effect of, on Italy, 183. 

Emigres, misrepresentations of, 41. 

Emile, 20. 

Emilia, a classical type, 145. 



232 



INDEX 



Emperors: and the Empire, 186; 
encourage decentralization, ib.; po- 
sition of the German, ib. ; rulers of 
Austria-Hungary, ib. 

Empire: foreseen by Mirabeau, 34. 

Empress Frederick, enemy of Bis- 
marck, 198. 

Ems, William I. and Benedetti at, 212. 

Enclaves, system of, 5, r?2o. 

Encyclopaedists and colonials, 18, 24. 

Encyclopedic ou Dictionnaire raisonne 
des sciences, des arts et des metiers, 18. 

England: and industrial power, 12; 
a real empire, ib.; and United 
States, 25; and Revolution, 37; 
Hellenes, and France, 44; Napo- 
leon's appreciation of, 55; makes 
peace at Amiens, 72; watched by 
Napoleon, 75; combats him, 86 
sqq. ; advantage of Peninsular War 
to, 92 ; and Austria, coalition of, 95 ; 
policy of, discussed, 98; and the 
Coalition, 107, in, 122; in United 
States, in; in Spain, ib. ; re- 
tains political liberty, 128; and 
France, friendship of, 131; and 
Greek liberty, 141 ; literary life of, 
143 sqq.; and Hegel's system, 149; 
and the July Revolution, 156; Par- 
liamentary parties in, 157; the 
Press in, ib.; Reform Bill in, 158; 
France, and the orient, 159; influ- 
ence of Comte in, 167, 168; science 
in, 169; influence of European 
changes on, 173; and Cavour, 176, 
177; and Crimean campaign, 177; 
and Italian unity, 182; unity of, 
established, 185; Russia, Austria, 
possible French allies, 217. 

English: attacked by French (1796), 
60; and Russians defeated at Ber- 
gen, 65 ; view of Napoleon's fall, 73 ; 
resistance to Napoleon, 80; defeat 
French and Spanish fleets, 87 ; fail 
to expel French from Belgium, ib. ; 
and Dutch interests opposed, 93; 
and Spanish interests opposed, ib.; 
in Walcheren, 96, 97; Revolution 
not social, 1 20 ; squares and French 



cavalry, 122, 123; on Waterloo, 
123; nationality, true test of, 140; 
romanticism, 143; tardy recog- 
nition of Shakespeare by, 152; and 
French defeat Russians, 172; vic- 
tory of the Armada, 182; concep- 
tion of Bismarck, 199; interference 
expected in Dutch wars, 202. 

Epinay, Madame d', 19. 

Erfurt, congress at, 83. 

Espinasse, Mile, de L', 19. 

Essex, witch massacres in, 43. 

Est locus in rebus, 194. 

Eugene and Napoleon, 56. 

Eugenie: and Napoleon, Orsini's 
attentat on, 178; and Louis (Lou- 
Lou), 209; beauty and narrow- 
mindedness of, ib.; Catholic ten- 
dencies of, ib.; and Prussian war, 
210, 211. 

Europe: no international wars in, 
after 181 5, 4; defying, 25; a 
greater Hellas, 25, 119, 142, 222, 
224; hostile to French Revolution, 
47; peace policy for, discussed, 78; 
saved from Napoleon, 86 sqq. ; per- 
manent union of, impossible, 107; 
revolutions of, 119; coalition of, 
against Napoleon, 121 sqq.; nations 
of, duped, 132 sqq.; Alexander's 
attempt to dupe, 134; and proposed 
American enterprise, 135; degra- 
dation of, 139; holds aloof from 
Greek struggle, 141; sends a navy 
to help Greece, ib.; and the orient, 
142; political struggles in, ib.; 
idealism in, 151; centripetal forces 
in, 184; United States of, impossi- 
ble, ib.; Bismarck's knowledge of, 
194; changes in modern, 220; in- 
finite variety of, 223; prophecies 
on, 223, 224; Greece, and Rome, 
224; influence of intellect on, ib. 

European : international wars, preva- 
lence of, 1 61 8-1 81 5, 4; nations, 
differentiation of, 78; disturbance, 
magnitude of, 79; sovereigns, re- 
actionary, 105; sovereigns and the 
Revolution, 106; Powers, conflict- 



INDEX 



233 



ing interests of, 107 ; coalition over- 
threw Napoleon, 107, 108; Powers, 
meeting of, at Vienna, 121; Powers, 
attempts of Napoleon to conciliate, 
122; Powers, banish Napoleon to 
St. Helena, 127; victory at Nava- 
rino, 141; enthusiasm for Liszt, 
I S4» J 5Si thought, influence of 
Comte on, 168; Concert, changes 
in the, 173; Powers, and Italian 
unity, 174; Powers, intimate corre- 
lation of, 221. 
Evolution : history and sociology, 1 69 ; 
recklessly applied, 170; Darwin on, 
169, 170; Draper on, 170; Hell- 
wald on. ib. ; Lecky on, ib. ; Spen- 
cer on, ib. ; Tyler on, ib. 

Fallmerayer and modern Greeks, 
139, 140. 

Faust, a national creation, 153. 

Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria, in- 
fluenced by wife and camarilla, 163. 

Ferdinand IV. of Spain, a petty ty- 
rant, 136. 

Ferdinand VII.: cruel reign of, 136; 
fight of Spain for, 136, 137; sup- 
ported by French, ib. 

Fersen and Marie Antoinette, 33. 

Figaro, Le mariage de, 20. 

Fleuris, battle of, 45. 

Fouche, intrigues of, against Napo- 
leon, 116. 

Fouquier-Tinville, 44. 

Fox, ingenious arguments of, n. 

France: attitude to England, 13, 18; 
position of, 14, 38, 47; and Chat- 
ham, 14; and Seven Years' War, 
ib. ; and Austria, 15, 38, 60, 99, 159, 
177, 194, 219; centralization in, 31 ; 
and Poland, 37, 41 ; and Belgium, 
37; and Rhine country, ib.; in- 
vaded by Prussians, 38; England, 
and the Hellenes, 44; and Corsica, 
51; acquires territory west of 
Rhine, 62; attacked by Powers 
(1799), 65; invasions of. 65, 90, 
114, 215 ; influence of Napoleon on, 
68, 71; and European legal con- 



cepts, 70; Poland, and Italy, 82; 
retains continental conquests, 87; 
and Empire defeated at Rosbach, 
91; and Spain, alliance of, 92; 
unused to war at home, 116; pro- 
found changes in, 119; at Congress 
of Vienna, 128; retains political 
liberty, ib.; and England, friend- 
ship of, 131; allied armies retire 
from, 135; revolutions in, before 
1848, crushed, 156; the July Revo- 
lution in, ib.; wins liberty of the 
Press, 157; and Russia, 159; Eng- 
land, and the orient, ib.; scientific 
eminence of, 159, 166; material 
prosperity of, 159; rise and fall of, 
172, 219; and Cavour, 176; and 
Crimean campaign, 177; and Sar- 
dinia arrange to attack Austria, 1 79 ; 
and Italian unity, 182; German 
victories over, ib.; Lorraine joined 
to, 185; not homogeneous, ib.; 
united under the Bourbons, ib.; 
Sweden and Westphalian peace, 
186; concessions of, to Pope, 209; 
parties in, 209, 217; and South 
German states, 208; lost prestige 
of, 210; attitude of, to Hohenzol- 
lern candidate, 211; declares war 
on Prussia, 212; isolated by Bis- 
marck, 217; loses Alsace and Ger- 
man Lorraine, 218; makes peace at 
Frankfort-on-Main, ib.; war in- 
demnity of, ib. 

Francis II., of Austria: sues for 
peace, 77; declares Holy Roman 
Empire extinct, 78 ; and Archduke 
Charles, 95 ; attacks Napoleon, ib. ; 
ambitions of, 97; and Metternich, 
98. 

Francis Joseph : Emperor-King, Hun- 
gary and Austria, 164; peaceful 
policy of, 214. 

Franco- German War: not inter- 
national, 4; concentration in the, 
58; and Rome, 181; the, 202, 207- 
219; foreseen by Bismarck, 205; 
necessity of a, 208; effects of, on 
France, 218. 



234 



INDEX 



Frankfort-on-the-Main : incorporated 
by Prussia, 206; terms of peace 
at, 218. 

Franklin and Beaumarchais, 22. 

Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia, 
invades France, 215. 

Frederick, Empress, enemy of Bis- 
marck, 198. 

Frederick the Great: great wars of, 
international, 16; and Katharine, 
ib. ; and Maria Theresa, 1 7 ; cam- 
paigns of, 57; and Wellington, 91; 
success of, at Leuthen, ib. ; success 
of, at Rosbach, ib. ; victory of, at 
Mollwitz, 191; wins Silesia, ib. 

Frederick William II.: hostile to 
Revolution, 40; peace policy of, 79. 

Frederick William III.: peace policy 
of, 79; ambitions of, 98. 

French: colonies lost, 12; peasantry, 
condition of, 29; homogeneity of, 
30 ; attacks on English, 60 ; attacks 
on Habsburgs, ib.; defeated at 
Aboukir Bay, 64; at Marengo 
saved by Desaix, 67; recover Lom- 
bardy, ib.; character of the, 71, 72; 
distaste for expansion, 72; in- 
difference to Austerlitz, ib.; desert 
Napoleon, 73, 108, 117; desertion 
of Jeanne d'Arc, 74; reviving in- 
terest of, in Napoleon, 75; and 
Spanish fleets defeated by English, 
86, 87; ravages of, in Spain, 88; 
account of Peninsular War, 89; 
sick massacred by Veronese, ib.; 
Bavarians and Magyars invade 
Germany, 91 ; under Dupont sur- 
render to Castanos, 92; defeated 
by Archduke Charles, 96; Crown 
and West Indies, 99 ; guilty of Napo- 
leon's downfall, 107; loyalty of, to 
Louis XIV., 108; classes, attitude 
of, to Napoleon, 116; nation, com- 
posed of two elements, ib. ; loyalty 
of, to Henry II., 117; loyalty of, 
to Louis XV., ib.; at La Haie 
Sainte, 122; cavalry and English 
squares, 123; on Waterloo, ib.; 
support Ferdinand VII., 137; vic- 



torious march of, to Cadiz, ib.; 
establish Italian unity, 138; un- 
injured by Metternich, ib. ; roman- 
ticism, 143; Balzac's greatness not 
recognized by, 153; dissatisfaction 
of, 156; Royal family, attempts on 
life of, 159; Government, influence 
of Comte on the, 168; and English 
defeat Russians, 172; Empire, es- 
tablishment of the Second, ib. ; 
Republic, Louis Napoleon, Presi- 
dent of, 1 73 ; indignation of, against 
Orsini, 179; statesmen and Italian 
unity, ib. ; conception of Bismarck, 
199; opposition refuses supply for 
army, 210; opposition responsible 
for disaster, ib.; and German 
officers, 215; beaten in every en- 
gagement, ib.; officers, failure of 
the, ib. ; experience gained in 
Mexico, etc., 216; under Gambetta, 
ib. 

French army: victories of, 47; ex- 
cellence of the, 79; efficiency of, 
reduced, 87; harassed by Cossacks, 
104; retreat of, ib. 

French bourgeoisie : condition of the, 
29 sqq. ; character of the, 116; 
hostility of, to Napoleon, ib.; in 
power, ib. 

French Revolution: causes of, 26 
sqq.; importance of the, 26; prob- 
lem of the, 27; social character of 
the, 120. 

Friedland, victory of, 81, 82. 

Fulton, steamship of, 58. 

Galicia won by Austria, 192. 

Gambetta: and Danton, 216, 218; 
French resistance under, 216; 
policy of unflinching resistance, 
218. 

Garda, Lake, fortresses round, re- 
duced, 61. 

Garibaldi: and Cavour, 175; com- 
promises South Italy, 181; in 
Sicily and Naples, ib. 

Gastein, treaty of, 202, 203. 

Gates at Saratoga, 23. 



INDEX 



235 



Genghis Khan and the Duke of Bruns- 
wick, 42. 

Genoa and Corsica, 51. 

Gensonne, 43. 

Gentz: foresees close of Reaction, 
156; secretary of Metternich, ib. 

Geoffrin, Madame, 19. 

Geo-politics : influence of, 8, 14; 
and France, 37; and Corsica, 50; 
and Ignatius Loyola, 51; and 
Egypt, 63; and the Papal States, 
175; and Italy, 182; and Germany, 
185; and Bismarck, 194; impor- 
tance of, 224. 

George III.: taxes of, 7; peace of, 
with French, 1763, 10; proclama- 
tion of Oct. 7, 1763, ib. ; policy, 
discussion of, n, 12; ambition of, 

25- 

German: code of law, 70; view of 
Napoleon's fall, 73; corps and Na- 
poleon, 85; reserves of Napoleon, 
113; writers on Waterloo, 123; 
small states, apprehensions of, 1 30 ; 
Confederation, Diet of, 131; small 
states left in statu quo, ib. ; political 
writers imprisoned, 133; classics, 
143; romanticism, ib.; unity, rise 
of, 172; literature, historical im- 
portance of, 188; language, appre- 
ciation of, ib.; Confederation, 
prominent members of, 189; unity 
prepared by Luther, etc., 194; 
unity, distant causes of, 196; Con- 
federacy, N., established by Bis- 
marck, 206 ; armies invade France, 
215; armies, leaders of the, ib.; 
officers, bold initiative of the, ib. 

Germanization of Hungary, 164. 

Germans, tardy recognition of Bach 
by, 153. 

Germany: and Talleyrand's project, 
67, 68; commencement of, 78; 
conquest of, 80; conquered by 
Gustavus Adolphus, 91 ; invaded 
by French, etc., ib. ; saved by Marl- 
borough, ib.; Saxony's treachery 
to, 130; incapable of a real revolu- 
tion, 137; Press gagged by, ib.; 



injured by the Reaction, 138; 
literary life of, 143 sqq. ; and Hegel's 
system, 149; revolutions in, before 
1848, crushed, 156; South, revolu- 
tion in, 161 ; union of, and Bis- 
marck, 173, 176, 196, 207; effect 
of a united, 173 ; union of, foreseen, 
179; battles of, against France, 
182; unity of, 184-206; absence of 
sea-power in, 185 ; influence of geo- 
politics on, ib.; anarchy in, 186; 
Church possessions in, ib. ; in- 
tellectual unity of, 187, 189; Refor- 
mation in, 188; spiritual unity of, 
189; political unity of, ib. ; Austria, 
a bad political centre for, 192, 193; 
Prussia a good political centre for, 
ib. ; theories on origin of modern, 
196; forced to become a military 
power, 197; unity of, shown by 
Franco-German war, 215; financial 
exhaustion of, 217; at Versailles be- 
comes the German Empire, 218; 
unity of, accomplished, ib.; am- 
bitions of modern, 219. 

Gibbon's Decline, obsolete, 151. 

Girondists: and War Party, 41; 
growing influence of, 43. 

Gneisenau, 82; and Napoleon's fall, 

73- 

Godoy suggests French alliance, 94. 

Goethe: the homologue of Napoleon, 
26; at Valmy, 38; and Napoleon, 
48; works of, 143; on classicism 
and romanticism, 144; language of , 
188. 

Gorgei, General: genius of, 163; 
successes of, ib.; surrenders at 
Vilagos, ib. 

Gothard, St., crossed by Suwarow, 65. 

Grammont: and Austria, 211; and 
Italy, ib.; and South German 
States, ib.; forces a rupture with 
Prussia, ib. ; presses William L, ib. 

Grande peur, la, 32. 

Grandet, the type of avarice, 153. 

Grasse, Comte de, engagements of, 23 ; 
prevents relief of Cornwallis, 23, 24. 

Graves off Chesapeake Bay, 23. 



236 



INDEX 



Greece: European navy sent to, 141 ; 
and Europe, 222; nationalism in, 
ib.; Europe and Rome, 224; vide 
Hellenes. 

Greek Church in Russia, 224. 

Greek literature, models of, 143. 

Greeks: uninjured by Metternich, 
139; excesses of, 141; victory at 
Salamis, 182. 

Grenoble, Napoleon passes through, 
120. 

Grenville, policy of, discussed, 12. 

Grenville's taxes, 7. 

Grimm, Joseph, and Germanic lan- 
guage, 150. 

Grouchy: and Desaix, 67; an unre- 
liable general, 126; pursues B Richer 
in mistaken direction, ib. ; and 
Napoleon, junction of, necessary, 
127; remains at Wavre, ib. 

Guadet, 43. 

Guizot, Louis Philippe yields to, 

Gustavus III., hostile to Revolution, 
40. 

Gustavus Adolphus: a strategist, 56; 
and Wellington, 91 ; conquers Ger- 
many, ib.; times of, 112. 

Habeas corpus and liberty of the 
Press, 157. 

Habsburgs: and Bourbons, 15; and 
Kaunitz, ib. ; and Starhemberg, ib. ; 
attacked by French, 60 ; and French 
Crown, 99, 100; Imperial policy of 
the, 186; character of the, 190; 
prominent in German Confedera- 
tion, 189; lacking in assimilative 
power, 190; allies of the Catholic 
Church, ib. 

Haie Sainte, La: Anglo-Dutch centre 
at, 122; occupied by French, ib. ; 
Napoleon defeats Anglo-Germans 
at, 127. 

Hallidon Hill and Scotch, 87. 

Ham fortress, imprisonment of Louis 
Napoleon in, 159. 

Hanau, battle of, 114. 

Hanover: a cause of contention, 13; 



victorious advance of Prussians 
into, 205; etc., incorporated by 
Prussia, 206. 

Hardenberg : and Prussia, 82 ; repre- 
sentative of Prussia, 129; and 
Prussian efficiency, 193. 

Haynau, cruelty of, 164. 

Hebert: and "The Terror," 44; 
death of, 47. 

Hegel: and Berkeley, etc., 148; ex- 
tensive field of, ib.; Professor at 
Berlin, ib.; a "romantic," 149; 
and Minister Altenstein, ib. ; causes 
triumph of, ib. ; system of, in Amer- 
ica, England, and Germany, ib.; 
subjectiveness of, 149, 150; ad- 
miration felt for, 165; death of, ib.; 
influence of, on law, ib.; influence 
of, on political science, ib.; influ- 
ence of, on religion, ib.; reaction 
against, 165, 166. 

Hegelianism, 148-150. 

Heine: grace of, 143; prose style of, 
ib.; morbid creations of, 144; 
amours of, 145; and Chopin, 147, 
148. 

Helena, St., Napoleon at, 52, 60. 

Hellas: and Persia, 25; compared to 
Europe, 142. 

Hellenes: and primitive historical 
concepts, 1 ; England and France, 
44 ; determine to rise against Turks, 
139; fight Mahmud IL, 140; 
treachery of, to Hellenes, ib.; suc- 
cessful on sea, 141; independence 
of, recognized, 142. 

Hellwald on evolution, 170. 

Henry II. , loyalty of French to, 117. 

Henry IV. and Napoleon, 53. 

Henry, Cape, one of the most decisive 
naval battles off, 23, 24. 

Herder, language of, 188. 

Hesse: apprehensions of, 130; Land- 
grave of, sells his subjects, 187. 

Hillsborough, Lord, and the proclama- 
tion of 1763, 10. 

Hinterland: as true cause, 9; at- 
tempted occupation of, 11; acquisi- 
tion of, 18. 



INDEX 



237 



Historical investigation, true method 
of, 8. 

History: and romanticism, 151; 
development of, 151; place of 
science in, 168; and evolution, 170. 

Hoffmann and Schumann, 146. 

Hohenzollern prince supported by 
Bismarck, six. 

Holbach, 18. 

"Holy Alliance": reactionary char- 
acter of the, 137; the, ib. 

Holland: occupation of, 43; allies 
expelled from, 45; and Belgium, 
separation of, 176. 

Holy Roman Empire: disrupted, 77; 
partial revival of, 131. 

Hood off Chesapeake Bay, 23. 

Houssaye, researches of, 125. 

Howe and Villaret de Joyeuse, 47. 

Huguenots, a separate polity, 30. 

Humboldt: a brutal diplomatist, 129; 
admiration of, for Schiller, ib.; 
advocates annihilation of Saxony, 
ib.; and Talleyrand, ib.; literary 
character of, ib. ; wishes to keep 
France powerless, ib.; representa- 
tive of Prussia, 129. 

Humboldt, Alexander von, generali- 
zations of, 169; apostle of natural 
science, 169, 170. 

"Hundred Days, The," lai. 

Hundred Years' War and Jeanne 
d'Arc, 74. 

Hungarian: revolution, social, 161; 
revolution, great men produced by, 
ib. ; diets, reforms of, 162; nobles, 
exempt from taxation, ib.; nobles, 
patriotism of, ib. ; reforms, peculiar 
feature of, 163; revolution, failure 
of, temporary, 164. 

Hungarians: expel Austrians, 163; 
surrender at Vilagos, ib.; ancient 
political independence of, 164; 
passive resistance of, ib. ; attitude of, 
to Austria, 194; vide also Magyars. 

Hungary: invaded by Russia, 163; 
Kossuth, Governor of, ib.; Ger- 
manization of, 164; unified by 
Deak, 173; nationalism in, 222. 



Ibrahim, leads fleet against Greece, 
141. 

Ideal motives, value of, assessed, 8. 

Idealogists, the, and Napoleon, 64. 

Ideals, failure of, 152. 

Illyria, Marmont in, 103. 

Indo-Germanic theory and roman- 
ticism, 150. 

Inquisition reestablished in Spain, 
136. 

International peace, explanation of, 5. 

Invalides, Hotel dcs, Napoleon's 
ashes placed in the, 159. 

Ireland: settled condition of, 13; the 
basis of a French invasion, 60. 

Italia far a da se, 182. 

Italian: revolt in Pavia crushed, 89; 
political writers imprisoned, 133; 
romanticism, 143; revolution, fail- 
ure of, temporary, 164; character, 
the, 174, 175; patriots and Napo- 
leon III., 178, 179. 

Italians: (Verona) massacre French 
sick, 89; furious at peace of Villa 
Franca, 180; enthusiasm of the, 
ib.; Garibaldi and Mazzini appeal 
to the, 181; defeated by Austria, 
206; and Catholicism, 224. 

Italian unity: promoted by Powers, 
6, 182; promoted by Napoleon, 68; 
174; due to French, 138; an old 
ideal, 174; rise of, 172; opposition 
to, 1 76 ; and French statesmen, 179; 
accomplished, 183, 206; justified, 
181. 

Italy: entered by Napoleon, 57; in- 
vaded by Austro-Russian army, 65; 
Poland and France, 81 ; and Napo- 
leon, interests coincident, 114; be- 
comes Austrian, 132; revolutions 
in, 136, 156, 161; no open revo- 
lution in, possible, 137; sapped by 
reaction, 138; unity of, 172-183; 
Cavour in, 1 73 ; effect of a united, 
ib.; and unification of the West, 
174; influence of Papacy, 175; 
secret societies in, ib.; Austria su- 
preme in, 177; declares for Victor 
Emmanuel, 181; South, compro- 



238 



INDEX 



mised by Garibaldi, ib. ; and Catho- 
lic Church, 1 82 ; geographical posi- 
tion of, ib. ; prospects of modern, ib. ; 
weakness of, 182, 183; Venetian, 
won by Austria, 191; Albert com- 
mands in, 204; treaty of, with Bis- 
marck, ib. ; wins Venetian territory, 
206. 

Jansenists: a separate polity, 30; and 
Bull Unigenitus, 31. 

Jeanne d'Arc: and Napoleon, 74; 
deserted by French, ib. ; imprisoned 
at Rouen, ib.; inner voices of, 101. 

Jellachich and Croatians invade Hun- 
gary, 163. 

Jemmapes, battle of, 43. 

Jena: battle of, 79; Prussians de- 
feated at, 194. 

Jesuits: and the hinterland, 9; 
founded by Ignatius, 51. 

Jesus, life of, by Strauss, 165. 

Joseph Bonaparte and Charles IV., 
92. 

Josephine : and Barras, 60 ; marriage 
of, ib.; and Austerlitz, 72; and 
West Indies, 99; Napoleon's Mas- 
cotte, ib. 

Jouan, Port, Napoleon lands at, 120. 

Jourdan in the Main valley, 60. 

Joyeuse, Villaret de, and Howe, 47. 

Juliet, a classical type, 145. 

July Revolution: effects of the, 156, 
157; Academic character of the, 
158. 

Jury system and the liberty of the 
Press, 157. 

Justinian and Napoleon, 69. 

Kalb, de, and Beaumarchais, 21, 22. 
Kant, philosophy of, 148. 
Karlsbad, Congress at, 134. 
Katharine II. and Prussia, 16, 18. 
Kaunitz: and Habsburgs, 15; and 

Napoleon, 48; negotiates French 

alliance, 99. 
Kepler and planetary system, 4. 
Kiel : and the Elbe, canal connecting, 

201: commanded by Schleswig- 



Holstein, ib.; essential to Prussia, 
ib. 

King Lear and Pere Goriot, 153. 

Koeniggraetz, battle of, 200, 205. 

Kossir, boundary of, 64. 

Kossuth: in prison, 133; eloquence 
of, 161, 162; outcome of Hunga- 
rian revolution, 1 61-163; son of, 
present greatness of, 161; perma- 
nent influence of, on Magyars, 1 62 ; 
statesmanship of, ib.; becomes 
Governor of Hungary, 163. 

Kotzebue: assassination of, 133; as 
a Russian spy, ib. 

Kowno, Napoleon at, 103. 

Kufstein, prison of, 133. 

Kutusow: and Ulm campaign, 56; 
failure to join Mack, 76; resistance 
of, 104; retreat of, ib. 

Lafayette: unimportance of, 1; and 
Beaumarchais, 2; and Americans, 
74- 

Laibach, Congress at, 134. 

Lamartine: prose style of, 143; 
Elegies and Meditations, 144; mel- 
lowed cadence of, ib. ; morbid crea- 
tions of, ib.; amours of, 145; 
Ledru-Rollin, and Cavaignac, 160. 

Lange, Albert, History of Material- 
ism, 171. 

Lannes : in Spain, 88 ; death of, 96. 

Latin America, revolutions in, 135. 

Lebceuf, Marshal, statement of, 211. 

Lecky: and witch massacres, 43; on 
evolution, 170. 

Ledru-Rollin, Lamartine and Cavai- 
gnac, 160. 

Lee, Arthur, and Beaumarchais, 21, 
22. 

Legitimacy, principle of, 130. 

Legnago, fortress of, reduced, 61. 

Leibniz: Louis XIV., and Egypt, 63; 
and the infinitesimal calculus, 85. 

Leipsic, 25; Napoleon broken at, 90; 
Napoleon at, 112; battle of, 114; 
and Waterloo, relative importance 
of, 125. 

Leoben, Napoleon's march to, 61. 



INDEX 



239 



Leopardi: morbid creations of, 144; 
amours of, 145. 

Leopold II., hostile to Revolution, 40. 

Lessing: classical works of, 143; 
language of, 188. 

Leuthen, Austrians defeated at, 91. 

Lexington, colonial progress foreseen 
before, 10. 

Liberty: suppression of, 135; ideal of, 
not realized by Louis-Philippe, 160. 

Ligny: Blucher defeated at, 124; and 
Quatre-Bras, battles of, 125, 126; 
Blucher defeated at, ib. 

Lisbon, on strategic line, 88, 89. 

Lissa, battle of, 181. 

Liszt : Francis, genius of, 154, 155 ; and 
Paganini, 155; poetic genius of, ib. 

Literature: in England, 143 sqq.; in 
Germany, ib.; in France, 143. 

Lobau, Napoleon at, 96. 

Lodi, Napoleon at, 49. 

Lombard, Chapelle St., Biilow at, 127. 

Lombardy, Napoleon in, 60, 61 ; in- 
vaded by Suwarow, 65; lost to 
France, ib. ; recovered by France, 
67; wealth of, 102; ceded by 
Austria, 180; ceded by Austria to 
Victor Emmanuel, ib.; Benedek's 
knowledge of, 204. 

Lonato, victory of, 61. 

Lorenz, Professor Otto, theory of, 197. 

Lorraine united with France, 185. 

Louis, conceit of the later, 118, 119. 

Louis XIII. , Savaron's rebuke to, 29. 

Louis XIV: and Napoleon, 14; am- 
bition of, 25; centralization policy 
of, 31; Leibniz, and Egypt, 63; 
coalition against, 60, 106; supported 
by French, 108; palace of, at Ver- 
sailles, 218; tries to unite Europe, 
223. 

Louis XV.: and French Revolution, 
27; foreign policy of, ib.; and 
ancien regime, 29; loyalty of French 
to, 117. 

Louis XVI. : and French Revolution, 
27; foreign policy of, ib. ; and 
ancien regime, 29; character of, 32; 
blindness of, 35 ; dismisses Necker, 



36; attempted flight, and capture 
of, 40; loyalty of French to, 41; 
and Marie Antoinette, 99. 

Louis XVIII. : made king, 117; exile 
of, 118; limitations of, ib.; flight 
of, 121. 

Louis-Philippe : and popular con- 
cessions, 75; made King of France, 
157; affability of, 158; and Charles 
II., ib.; and Austria, 159; and 
Russia, ib. ; attempts on life of, ib. ; 
incapacity of, ib.; temporizing 
policy of, ib. ; yields to Casimir- 
Perier, Guizot, and Thiers, ib.; 
Revolution against, 160. 

Louis (Lou-Lou) and Eugenie, 209. 

Louisiana, sale of, 71. 

Louvois, centralizations of, 31. 

Loyola, St. Ignatius, and the Basques, 

5i- 
Lucien, conspiracy of, 66. 
Luneville, peace of, 67. 
Luther, reforms of, and German unity, 

194. 
Lyons, Napoleon passes through, 120. 

Macdonald, leader of Napoleon's left, 
103; admirable conduct of, 118. 

Macedonia, nationalism in, 222. 

Machiavelli on the Papacy, 175. 

Mack, Napoleon's estimate of, 54, 76; 
and Ulm campaign, 56; and Aus- 
trians at Ulm, 76; surrender of, ib. 

MacMahon, Marshal, want of initia- 
tive of, 215. 

Madrid and Bourges, 38. 

Magenta, battle of, 180, 182. 

Magersfontein and Waterloo, 124. 

Magyar independent government es- 
tablished, 163. 

Magyars: French and Bavarians in- 
vade Germany, 91 ; permanent in- 
fluence of Kossuth on, 162; revolt 
of the, 163; vide also Hungarians. 

Maban and Beaumarchais, 2. 

Mahmud II., armies of, 140; asks 
help of Mehmed Ah, 141. 

Main valley, Jourdan in the, 60. 

Maintenon, Madame de, 99. 



240 



INDEX 



Malplaquet, 25. 

Malta occupied by Napoleon, 64. 

Mantua, fortress of, reduced, 61. 

Marat : and ' ' The Terror," 44 ; death 
of, 46. 

Marathon and modern Greeks, 140. 

Marengo: battle of, 24, 67; cam- 
paign of, 66, 67; and Waterloo, 67. 

Margaret, a classical type, 145. 

Maria Theresa: and Frederick, 15; 
and Kaunitz, ib.; loses Silesia, 191 ; 
interference of, in Europe, 214. 

Marie Antoinette: character of, 33; 
and Calonne, ib.; and Fersen, ib.; 
St. Cloud and Rambouillet, ib. ; 
blindness of, 35; attempted flight 
and capture of, 40; and Louis XVL, 
99. 

Marie Louise: character of, 99; 
marries Napoleon, ib.; Napoleon's 
jettatora, ib.; conduct of, 118; 
Napoleon's marriage with, ib. 

Marlborough: and Napoleon, 56; 
and Wellington, 91 ; saves Ger- 
many, ib. 

Marmont: and Napoleon, 103; in 
Illyria, ib. 

Marseillaise forbidden, 132. 

Massacres of September, 42. 

Massena: strategy of, in Italy, 61; 
victory of, at Zurich, 65; drives 
Wellington behind Torres Vedras, 
89. 

Materialism, History of, by Lange, 
171. 

Materialism: taught by Buechner, 
170; taught by Carl Vogt, ib. ; 
taught by Moleschott, ib.; effects 
of, 171. 

Max Emmanuel and Blenheim cam- 
paign, 56. 

Mayence, Archbishop, possessions of, 
186. 

Mazarin and Richelieu, and Bis- 
marck, 198, 199. 

Mazzini: enthusiasm of, 176; pam- 
phlets of, 181. 

Mediatization of small German sov- 
ereignties, 68. 



Mehmed Ali, governor of Egypt, 
141. 

Melanchthon, reforms of, and Ger- 
man unity, 194. 

Melas: project of French invasion, 
65; technical victory at Marengo, 
66. 

Merimee, Prosper, prose style of, 143. 

Metternich: and Napoleon, 48, 59; 
advice of, 82; believes Napoleon 
unconquerable, 86; character of, 
98, 129; advice of, to Francis, 98; 
a believer in luck, 99; and Napo- 
leon's marriage, ib.; vanity of, 108, 
no; neglects Austria's interests, 
109; deaf to Napoleon's proposals, 
113; influence of, 114; proposes 
St. Helena for Napoleon, 117; and 
Alexander I., attitude to France, 
128; and Talleyrand, 129; policy 
of, 130; and the Congress, 131; 
and national liberties, 132, 136, 138, 
139; master of Diet, 132; and as- 
sassination of Kotzebue, 133; and 
police supreme, ib.; and Alexan- 
der's plans, 135; triumph of, ib.; 
and the Holy Alliance, 137; de- 
cadent ideal of, 138; reaction under, 
ib.; and Hellenes, 139; contrasted 
with Napoleon, ib.; jealous of 
Russia, 141 ; opposed Greek rising, 
ib. 

Metz, disaster at, 216. 

Mexico, French experience gained in, 
216. 

Meyer, Edward, and Socrates, 101. 

Middle Ages: and eighteenth cen- 
tury, 150; and romanticism, ib. 

Milan, rising at, 136. 

Mill, J. S., a follower of Comte, 168. 

Mirabeau: character of, ^; death 
of, 34; foresees Empire, ib. ; mod- 
eration of, 37. 

Moleschott, teacher of materialism, 
170. 

Mollwitz, battle of, 191. 

Moltke: and Bismarck, 200; con- 
fident of defeating Austrians, 203; 
and Crown Prince attack Benedek, 



INDEX 



241 



205; Roon and Bismarck, 212; 

invades France, 215. 
Mommsen, enemy of Bismarck, 198. 
Mondovi, battle of, 61. 
Montcalm, and colonial secession, 10. 
Montenotte, battle of, 61. 
Montesquieu, 18. 
Montmirail, battle of, 115, 124. 
Moore pursued by Napoleon, 94. 
Moravia: Austrian and Russian trap 

in, 76; Napoleon in, 77; occupied 

by Prussians, 205. 
Moreau: in the Danube valley, 60; 

victory at Hohenlinden, 67. 
Moscow: a sacred town, 104; entered 

by Napoleon, ib. ; fired by Russians, 

ib. ; the sacred capital, 135. 
Moscowa, battle of the, 103, 104. 
Motley, a friend of Bismarck, 199. 
Mozart and Chopin, 147. 
Music before and after Napoleon, 145. 

Nantes, Revocation of Edict of, 30, 31. 

Naples: and Italian unity, 176; rising 
at, 136; Garibaldi in, 181. 

Napoleon: and geo-politics, 14; at 
Marengo, 24; ambition of, 25; the 
homologue of Goethe, 26, 48; and 
"Convention," 45; anticipations 
of, 47; criticisms on, 48; military 
exploits of, ib.; and Charles V., 49; 
as a legislator, ib.; personality of, 
ib.; and Alexander the Great, 50, 
63; and Caesar, ib.; and Corsica, 
50 ; and family, ib. ; courage of, at 
Arcole and Lodi, ib. ; cowardice of, 
ib.; the climax of a series, 51 ; and 
Robert Bruce, 52; and Shamyl, 
ib.; and Themistocles, ib. ; at St. 
Helena, 52, 60, 127; phenomenon 
of, explained, 52; the outcome of 
the Revolution, ib. ; and Bismarck, 
53 ; and Henry IV., ib.; and Revo- 
lution, ib.; and Cromwell, 53, 62; 
character of, 53 sqg., 100; and 
geography, 54; and Mack, ib.; 
and Richelieu, ib.; judgment of, 
ib.; the Ulm campaign of, 54, 56, 
75-78; appreciation of English by, 



55; appreciation of Portuguese by, 
ib.; appreciation of Spanish by, 
ib.; strategy of, 55-59, 61, 67, 76, 
101, 114; and Eugene, 56; and 
Marlborough, ib.; and Walcheren 
expedition, 57; at the Corniche, ib. ; 
campaigns of, ib.; enters Italy vid 
Little St. Bernard, ib.; enters Italy 
vid Savona, ib.; Wagram, cam- 
paign of, ib.; and concentration, 58; 
and the weapons of war, ib.; his 
theory of campaigns, ib.; at Aus- 
terlitz, 59; at Dresden, ib.; luck 
of, ib. ; and Alexander I., ib. ; and 
Blucher, ib.; and Metternich, ib., 
139; and Wellington, 59, 89, 91; 
causes of downfall of, 59, 72-73, 
107; coalition against, 60, 105, ic6; 
and Barras, 60; in Lombardy, ib.; 
marries Josephine, ib.; at Dego, 
61 ; at Mondovi, ib. ; at Montenotte, 
ib.; near Vienna, ib.; reduces the 
quadrilateral, ib.; separates Beau- 
lieu and Colli, ib.; in Carinthia, 
ib. ; at Tolentino, 62 ; in Carniola,z7>. ; 
in Styria, ib. ; march of to Leoben, 
ib. ; and peace with Austria, ib.; 
self-realization of, ib.; and jealousy 
of Directors, 63 ; and Sesostris, ib. ; 
and mysticism, ib.; and Egypt, 
63-65; and idealogists, 64; avoids 
Nelson, ib.; occupies Malta, ib.; 
in Syria, ib. ; victory of, at M. 
Tabor, 65; emotion of, 66; First 
Consul, ib.; renews the Italian 
campaign, ib.; and peace of Lune- 
ville, 67; hated by Spain, 68; re- 
organization of Germany by, ib 
the creator of Modern France, ib 
the forerunner of Bismarck, ib 
the promoter of Italian unity, ib 
anticipated by Convention, ib, 
and Justinian, 69; and Frederick 
the Great, ib.; and Tronchet, ib.; 
creator of the Banque de France, 
ib. ; educational reforms of, ib.; 
ascendency of, ib., 82, 83, 97; ab- 
dication of, 69, 90, 117, 127; at 
Austerlitz, 70 ; legal reforms of, ib. ; 



242 



INDEX 



at Leipsic, ib. ; at Waterloo, ib. ; and 
French prosperity, 71; in finance, 
ib. ; policy of, not national, 72; and 
Louis XIV., 73; and Jeanne d'Arc, 
74; and England, 75; at Bou- 
logne, ib. ; Austria and Russia, ib.; 
enters Vienna, 76; and autonomy 
of Bavaria, 77; and autonomy of 
Saxony, ib.; in Moravia, ib.; and 
a world-empire, 80; conquers Aus- 
tria, Prussia, and Germany, ib. ; 
English resistance to, ib. ; enters 
Berlin, ib. ; in Poland, ib. ; Russian 
resistance to, ib. ; Spanish resis- 
tance to, ib. ; and Madame de Wa- 
lewska, 81 ; and Poland, ib. ; Polish 
policy unwise, ib.; Spanish policy 
unwise, ib.; partition with Alexan- 
der, 82; convenes Erfurt Congress, 
83; period (1810-1815), 84 sqq.; 
and British army, 85; and German 
corps, ib.; disproportionate plans 
of, ib.; marries a Habsburg prin- 
cess, ib. ; on Russian courage, ib.; 
believed unconquerable, 86; pres- 
tige lessened in Russia, ib. ; pres- 
tige lost after Leipsic, ib. ; Oriental 
plans of, 85, 86, 102; defeated by 
Wellington and Bliicher, 87 ; crushes 
the Pavia rebellion, 89; attitude 
of, to Peninsular War, 90; recalls 
troops from Spain, ib.; success of, 
broken at Leipsic, ib. ; and Spain, 
interests of, compatible, 91, 92, 93; 
friendly attitude to Bavaria, 93; 
friendly attitude to Saxony, ib.; at 
Astorga, 94; attacked by Francis, 
95; Austrian campaign of, ib. ; 
campaign in Danube valley, ib.; 
and Lannes, 96; at Eckmiihl, ib.; 
at Lobau, ib.; at Ratisbon, ib. ; 
campaign of Aspern, ib. ; campaign 
of Wagram, ib.; defeats Archduke 
Charles, ib.; ambition of, discussed, 
97; Habsburg marriage of, 99, 100; 
in Elba, 99, 120; marries Marie 
Louise, 99; marriage of, and 
Metternich, ib.; birth of son to, 
100; Russian project of, 100, 101 ; 



inner voices of, 10 1 ; the apostle of 
liberty, 101, 121; and Marmont, 
103; and the Turkish empire, 102; 
at Kowno, 103; enters Moscow, 
104; greatness of, 107; deserted by 
French, 108, 115, 117; interests 
and Austria's harmonious, 108; 
rule of, limited by his life, ib.; 
betrayed by subordinates, 1 1 1 ; 
campaigns of (1813 and 1814), ib.; 
German reserves of, ib.; and the 
Coalition, 112; at Dresden, ib.; 
at Leipsic, ib. ; defeats Bliicher, 
ib. ; expected alliances of, ib. ; mis- 
judges the diplomatic situation, ib.; 
and anarchy, 113; lack of cavalry, 
ib. ; peace negotiations of, ib. ; pro- 
posals to Metternich, ib. ; and Aus- 
tria, interests coincident, 114; and 
Bavaria, interests coincident, ib.; 
and Italy, interests coincident, ib. ; 
and Saxony, interests coincident, 
ib.; and Wiirtemberg, interests co- 
incident, ib.; annihilates Bava- 
rians at Hanau, ib.; defeated at 
Leipsic, ib.; on European sov- 
ereigns, ib.; retreats into France, 
ib.; at Fontainebleau, 115; barren 
successes of (1814), ib. ; ignored by 
allies, ib. ; victorious at Brienne, 
ib.; victorious at Craonne, ib.; 
victorious at Montmirail, ib.; vic- 
torious at Reims, ib.; victorious at 
St. Dizier, ib. ; abdication of, mo- 
tives of, 117; dependents, beha- 
viour of, ib., 118; prisoner in Elba, 
117; unable to attach the bour- 
geoisie, ib.; at Grenoble, 120; at 
Lyons, ib.; marches on Paris, ib. ; 
conciliates the Republicans, 121; 
danger of, abroad, ib. ; enters Paris, 
ib.; opposed by a united Europe, 
121 sqq. ; promises constitutional 
Government, 121; safety of, at 
home, ib.; attempts to conciliate 
the Powers, 122; defeated before 
Waterloo, 124; defeats Bliicher at 
Ligny, ib. ; despair of, in Waterloo, 
campaign, ib.; paper army of, 125; 



INDEX 



243 



prestige of, ruined by Waterloo 
ib.; at Belle- Alliance, 127; mistake 
of, in Waterloo campaign, 126; 
slow advance of, on Wellington, ib.; 
and Grouchy, junction of, necessary, 
127; death of, ib.; defeats Anglo- 
Germans at La Haie Sainte, ib. ; 
surrenders to the " Bellerophon " 
captain, ib.; fall of, 128, 130, 152; 
and boundaries of small states, 131 ; 
represented an oppressor, 132; 
wrongly combated by Spain, 136; 
blunders of, 139; rule, benefits of, 
ib.; the governor of men, 153; and 
Balzac, 1 54 ; and State institutions, 
ib.; ashes of, brought from St. 
Helena, 159; ashes of, placed in the 
Hotel des Invalides, ib. ; and Italian 
unity, 174; influence of, on Ger- 
many, 189; and Eugenie and Prus- 
sia, 211; Spanish resistance to, 
217; and Napoleon III., 219; proph- 
ecy of, 223; tries to unify Europe, 
ib. 

Napoleon (Louis): subsequently Na- 
poleon III., 73; conspiracy of, 159; 
imprisoned in Ham fortress, ib. ; 
becomes President, 160; aims of, 
173, 174; becomes Emperor, 173; 
character of, ib. ; coup d'etat of, ib. ; 
promise of, to Italian patriots, 178; 
vide also Napoleon III. 

Napoleon III.: first conspiracy of, 
159; secret alliance of, and Cavour, 
177; and Eugenie, Orsini's attack 
on, 178; and Orsini, ib.; and Rus- 
sian war, ib.; meets Cavour at 
Plombieres, 179; opposes complete 
Italian unity, ib.; promises to at- 
tack Austria, ib.; threatened by 
Italian patriots, ib.; and Italian 
enthusiasm, 180; Austrian cam- 
paign of, ib.; cedes Lombardy to 
Victor Emmanuel, ib. ; makes peace 
at Villa Franca, ib.; misled by 
Cavour, ib.; proposes four Italian 
kingdoms, ib.; reproached by 
Italians, 181; afraid of anger of 
Pius IX., ib.; and Cavour, ib.; 



attack of, feared by Bismarck, 206 ; 
disaster of, 209; weakness of, ib. ; 
attacked by French opposition, 210; 
forced concessions of, ib. ; mistaken 
inaction of (1866), ib.; urges mili- 
tary supply, ib. ; mistaken policy of 
(1866), 214; and Napoleon I., 219; 
vide also Napoleon (Louis). 

Napoleonic dynasty, lost prestige of, 
210. 

Napoleons, Italian sympathies of the, 
180. 

Nationalism, growth of, 125. 

Nationality, meaning of, 140. 

Nations, battle of the, 114. 

Navarino, battle of, 141. 

Necker: removes abuses, 27; political 
writings of, 31 ; dismissed by Louis 
XVL, 36. 

Nelson: avoided by Napoleon, 64; 
victory at Aboukir Bay, ib. 

Neville's Cross, and Scotch, 87. 

Newton: and planetary system, 4; 
and the infinitesimal calculus, 85. 

New York, controlled by British, 23. 

Ney: defeated at Dennewitz, 112; 
defeated by Biilow, ib. ; ingratitude 
of, 118; swears allegiance to Louis 
XVIII. , ib.; joins Napoleon, 120, 
121; defeated by Wellington, 126. 

Nicholas I. : invades the Balkan, 141 ; 
deprives Poland of autonomy, 158; 
sends help to Austria, 163. 

Niel, Marshal, urges military supply, 
210. 

Nineteen Propositions and Idealism, 

7- 

Noailles, Due de, and abolition of 
ancien regime, 36. 

North Sea, Baltic and Prussia, 201. 

North: taxes of, 7; policy of, dis- 
cussed, 11, 12. 

Nouvelle Heloise, La, 20. 

Ohio, French expelled from, 10. 
Opera, Orsini's criminal attempt 

near the, 178. 
Ophelia, a classical type, 145. 
Oporto, on the strategic line, 88. 



244 



INDEX 



Ordinate and abscissa in history, 9. 

Orient: the, and Europe, 142; effect 
of European changes on the, 173. 

Orissa, 12. 

Orleans dynasty established, 157. 

Orsini: enthusiasm of, 176, 177; and 
Cavour, 177; criminal attempt of, 
178; French indignation against, 
1 79 ; heroism of, ib. ; execution of, ib. 

Otis, on constitution, 8. 

Oudinot defeated at Dennewitz by 
Bulow, 112, 113. 

Oxford Provisions and Idealism, 7. 

Paganini and Liszt, 155. 

Palafox and Napoleon's fall, 73. 

Paolis, the, 51. 

Papacy: and Italian unity, 175, 176; 
influence of the, 175; Machiavelli 
on the, ib. 

Papal States, the, 175. 

Paris : (second) treaty of, 6 ; indiffer- 
ence of, to Austerlitz, 72; allies 
march on, 115; Napoleon's march 
on, 120; entered by Napoleon, 121 
the science school of Europe, 166 
Orsini's criminal attempt at, 178 
siege of, 216. 

Party system : in England, 157; non- 
existent in France, ib. 

Paskievitch leads Russian army into 
Hungary, 163. 

Peace policy, disastrous results of a, 

78, 79- 

Peninsular Campaign : conflicting 
accounts of, 89 ; plan of, ib. ; strate- 
gic line of, ib. 

Peninsular War: Napoleon on the, 
60; Wellington on the, 87; a side 
issue, 90; and Russian campaign, 
ib.; true proportions of, 91-94; a 
clerical war, 92 ; fatal to Spain, 92- 
94 ; Spanish colonies lost in, 93, 94 ; 
England's interest in, 94. 

Pere Goriot and King Lear, 153. 

Persia and Hellas, 25. 

Peschiera, fortress of, reduced, 61. 

Petofi, outcome of Hungarian revolu- 
tion, 161. 



Phelippeaux defends Acre, 64, 65. 

Philhellenes, assistance of, 141. 

Philosophy: of the exact sciences, 
166; science substituted for, ib. 

Physics at Paris, 166. 

Piedmont, policy of the Kings of, 177. 

Pillnitz, Declaration of, 38. 

Pitt, greatness of, in home politics, 59. 

Plombieres, Napoleon III. meets 
Cavour at, 179. 

Poland: and France, 37, 41; friendly 
to Napoleon, 81 ; made a duchy by 
Napoleon, ib.; the three partitions 
of, ib. ; why not made independent, 
ib.; France and Italy, 82; and 
Alexander I., 130; and July Revo- 
lution, 156; rising of, encouraged 
by July Revolution, 158; loses au- 
tonomy to Nicholas I., ib. ; portions 
of, granted to Prussia, 192. 

Police : persecution and Congress, 
132 sqq. ; coercion and Metternich, 
136; coercion and Alexander I., ib. 

Polish: campaign (1807), 80; prob- 
lem, the, 81, 132; misery reflected 
in Chopin, 147. 

Political writers imprisoned, 133. 

Politics, discussion of, forbidden, 132. 

Pompadour, La Marquise de, 15. 

Pope Pius VI., 62. 

Pope Pius IX. and Cavour, 181. 

Popular government, dearth of, 133. 

Portugal : Napoleon's appreciation 
of, 55; revolutions in, 156. 

Positivism and romanticism, 171. 

Powers, disunion of, 130. 

Pozsony, diets at, 162, 163. 

Prague, Peace of, 206. 

Pressburg, treaty of, 77; vide Poz- 
sony. 

Press: compared to Ency dope die, 19; 
gagged by Austria and Germany, 
137; in France and England, 157. 

Press, liberty of the : and Charles X., 
157; and habeas corpus, ib.; and 
jury system, ib. ; and William III., 
ib. ; won by France, ib. 

Prussia: no territorial unity in, 5; 
and Elizabeth, 16; and Katharine 



INDEX 



245 



II., 16, 18; and Revolution, 37, 40, 
41; French peace with (1795), 47; 
foolish inaction of, 78; collapse of, 
79; peace policy of, ib. ; conquest 
of, 80 ; degradation of, ib. ; despair 
in, 82; makers of modern, ib.; a 
second-rate power, 97; joins the 
Coalition, 107, no, 122; and Aus- 
tria, natural antagonists, 109; foun- 
dations of present greatness, no; 
natural enemy of Austria, ib.; de- 
sires of, at Vienna, 128, 129; ag- 
grandizement of, 130; and Saxony, 
ib. ; Saxony cedes territory to, 131 ; 
and Cavour, 176, 177; and Italian 
unity, 182; King of, only Habsburg 
rival, 189; Silesia added to, 191; 
a good political centre, 192 ; assimi- 
lates Polish territory, ib. \ efficiency 
of, created by Stein, etc., 193; Bis- 
marck's knowledge, 195; and 
Schleswig-Holstein, 201 ; Baltic 
and the North Sea, ib. ; and Austria 
administers Schleswig-Holstein, 202, 
and Peace of Prague, 206; incor- 
porates Hanover, etc., ib. ; detailed 
information of, re French, 210; 
war declared by France on, 212; 
joined by Baden, 215; joined by 
Wurtemberg, ib. ; enclaves of, 220; 
and Austria, rivalry of, 130, 189; 
and Austria, relations between, 194; 
and Austria, members of German 
confederacy, 201. 

Prussian: rulers, weakness of, 59; 
campaign, 78; army, rottenness of 
the, 79; policy discussion of, 97; 
hatred of political liberty, 128; 
army, reforms in, 194; army at 
Jena, ib. ; victory at Sadowa, 200, 
205 ; adversaries of Bismarck, 203 ; 
victorious advance into Hanover, 
205, 206; ascendency established, 
206; victories and ascend/ncy, im- 
portance of, 207; Elector humili- 
ated, 218; King becomes King and 
German Emperor, ib. 

Prussians: on the Rhine, 42; and 
allies compel Napoleon's abdica- 



tion, 90; insist on entering Vienna, 
205; occupy Moravia, ib. 
Puritans of New England, moral 
force of, 8. 

Quadrilateral, reduction of, 61. 

Quatre-Bras: and Ligny, battles of, 
125, 126; Wellington at, ib. 

Quinet, Thiers, etc., realize Bis- 
marck's aims, 207. 

Race: and nationality, 140; as a fac- 
tor in history, 224. 
Radetzky, dash of, 164. 
Rambouillet and Marie Antoinette, 

33- 

Ratisbon, battle of, 96. 

Reaction: after Napoleon, 106; the, 
128-155; an d Congress, 132 sqq.; 
and Austria, 138; and Italy, ib.; 
compared to Thirty Years' War, ib. ; 
in literature, 143 ; close of, foreseen, 
by Gentz, 156; and romanticism, 
164, 165; and Hegelianism, 165. 

Record Office, documents in, re hin- 
terland, 11. 

Reformation, the, a Revolution, 119. 

Reform Bill, due to July Revolution, 
158. 

Reims, battle of, 115. 

Renaissance, the, a Revolution, 119. 

Republicans conciliated by Napo- 
leon, 121. 

Republique, Place de la, 47. 

Revolution: and England, 37; and 
other European Powers, ib.; geo- 
political aspect of, ib.; and Prus- 
sia, 37, 41 ; interest of Europe in, 
38; European Powers hostile to, 
40, 47; and Europe, 47; effects of 
the, ib.; leaders of the, 46; and 
Napoleon, 48 ; culminates in Napo- 
leon, 52; of 1848, 119; the French, 
European character of, ib.; the 
July, 156; in Austria-Hungary, 
160, 161; in Italy, ib.; in South 
Germany, ib.; of 1848, importance 
of, 160; intellectual, period of, 165. 

Revolutions: before 1848 in Italy 



246 



INDEX 



etc., crushed, 156; the, 1 56-1 71; 
effects of the, 171. 

Rhenish: provinces and Napoleon's 
code, 70; confederation in west- 
central Germany, 81. 

Richelieu: and Napoleon, 48, 54; 
inner voices of, 101 ; and Mazarin 
and Bismarck, 198, 199. 

Rivoli, victory of, 61. 

Robertson's Charles V., obsolete, 151. 

Robespierre: and "The Terror," 
44 ; appreciation of, 46. 

Rochambeau, statue to, 22. 

Rodrigue H or tales et Cie, 2 1 . 

Rogers, Robert, and the hinterland, 
10. 

Roland, Madame, a "Girondis," 
43, 46. 

Roman Catholic territories secula- 
rized, 67. 

Roman: Curia and Jeanne d'Arc, 
74; literature, models of, 143. 

Roman Empire, Holy: fall of, 174; 
character of, 185; sovereignties of 
the 186; commerce in the, 187; 
litigation in the, 186, 187; position 
of women in the, 187. 

Romantic music: chromatic, 145; 
character of, 145, 146. 

Romantic school: verse of the, 143; 
writers of the, ib.; attitude of the, 
to woman, 144; matter of the, ib. ; 
treatment of love in the, 145 ; treat- 
ment of music in the, ib. 

Romanticism, 142 sqq.; Philosophy 
of, 148-150; and subjectivism, 
149; and growth of language, 150; 
and Indo-Germanic theory, ib.; 
and Middle Ages, ib.; results of, 
150 sqq.; causes of, 150-152; and 
history, 151; and science, ib.; 
political causes of, ib. ; morbid sen- 
sitiveness of, 152; and Reaction, 
164, 165; in Germany, revulsion 
from, 168; and Positivism, 171; 
the outcome of struggle, ib. 

Rome: and Carthage, 25; and 
Bourges, 38; King of, 100; rising 
at, 136; a city apart from Italy, 181 ; 



entered by Italians, ib.; Europe 
and Greece, 224. 

Rosbach, Empire and France de- 
feated at, 91. 

Rostand, 21. 

Roumania : rise of, 1 73 ; nationalism 
in, 222. 

Rousseau, 18; influence of, 36. 

Runnymede and idealism, 7. 

Russia: and Manchurian hinterland, 
10; peaceful western policy, ib. ; 
and Seven Years' War, 14; and 
Prussia, 16; hostile to Revolution, 
40; defeated at Austerlitz, 72 ; and 
Austria in Danube valley, 75; 
poverty of, 102; joins the Coalition 
107, 122; Metternich jealous of, 
141; Poland revolts from, 158; 
and Louis Philippe, 159; appeal 
of Austria to, 163; declining in- 
fluence of, 172; gravitation of, east- 
ward, ib.; gravitates towards Asia, 
ib.; Austria, England, possible 
French allies, 217; Greek Church 
in, 224. 

Russian: war, success impossible in 
the, 60; view of Napoleon's fall, 73 ; 
resistance to Napoleon, 80 ; courage 
and Napoleon, 85; campaign, 
effects of, 86, 101; campaign and 
Peninsular War, 90; campaign, 
economic aspect of, 102 ; campaign, 
political aspect of, ib.; campaign, 
strategy of the, 101 ; campaign, 
uselessness of, 103; hatred of politi- 
cal liberty, 128; war and Napoleon 
III., 178; foreign policy, Bis- 
marck's conduct of, 197; inter- 
ference expected in Danish war, 202. 

Russians: and English, defeated at 
Bergen, 65; and allies compel Na- 
poleon's abdication, 90; fire Mos- 
cow, 104; retreat of, ib.; invade 
Hungary, 163; defeated by Eng- 
lish and French, 172. 

Sadowa: and Bismarck, 13; battle 

of, 200, 205, 206. 
St. Cloud and Marie Antoinette, 33. 



INDEX 



247 



St. Dizier, battle of, 115. 

St. Helena: proposed by Metternich, 
117; banishment of Napoleon to, 
127; Napoleon's ashes brought 
from, 159. 

St. Just, appreciation of, 44, 46. 

St. Petersburg, the commercial capi- 
tal, 135. 

St. Simon, Auguste Comte, a disciple 
of, 166. 

St. Simonism, 166. 

Salamanca: victory of, 88; on 
strategic line, 89. 

Salamis: and modern Greece, 140; 
battle of, 182. 

Salons, 19; bourgeois in the, 31. 

Sand : Charles, assasinatess Kotzebue, 
133; Georges, and Chopin, 147. 

Saratoga: British surrender at, 2, 23. 

Sardinia: Cavour minister in, 177; 
powerless against Austria, ib. ; and 
France arrange to attack Austria, 
179. 

Satzau, 77. 

Savaron and Louis XIII., 29. 

Savona route and Napoleon, 57. 

Savoy: policy of the House of, 177; 
House of, 180. 

Saxons: a-i-3 of Napoleon, 129; 
Prussian hatred of, ib. 

Saxony: becomes a kingdom, 77; 
less useful than Poland, 81 ; friendly 
to Napoleon, 93 ; aloof from Coali- 
tion, 107; Napoleon's ally, 112; 
and Napoleon, interests coincident, 
114; and Prussia, 130; treachery 
of, ib. ; loss of territory, 131; Ba- 
varia and Austria, 221. 

Scharnhorst, 82; and Prussian effi- 
ciency, 193. 

Schiller: admiration of Humboldt 
for, 129; and idealism, ib.; works 
of, 143; Kabale und Liebe, 187; 
language of, 188. 

Schleswig-Holstein : and Kiel, 201; 
and Prussia, ib.; and Austria, 202; 
administered by Austria and Prus- 
sia, ib. 

Schmerling and Bismarck, 194. 



Schonbrunn, treaty of, 97. 

Schopenhauer: on the reaction, 137, 
138; on the Revolution, ib.; de- 
cadent ideal of, 138; on Hegel, 
165, 166; on philosophy, ib. 

Schumann: and Bach, 146; and 
Beethoven, ib. ; and Hoffmann, 
ib. ; appreciation of, ib. ; works of, 
tb. 

Schwarzenberg, Prince, leader of 
Napoleon's right, 103. 

Science; substituted for philosophy, 
1 66 ; Comte the apostle of, 1 68, 1 70 ; 
place of, in history, 168; in Ger- 
many, ib.; in England, 169; Dar- 
win, the apostle of, 1 70 ; Humboldt, 
the apostle of, ib. 

Sciences, undue value attached to the, 
170. 

Sedan, disaster of, 216. 

September massacres, 42-44. 

Servia: rise of, 173; nationalism in, 
222. 

Seven Years' War, international, 5, 14. 

Shakespeare, tardy recognition of, 
152. 

Shamyl and Napoleon, 52. 

Sicily: Garibaldi in, 181; and Eu- 
rope, 222. 

Sidney Smith, Sir W., defends Acre, 
64. 

Sieyes, political writings of, 31. 

Silesia: Congress in, 134; ceded by 
Maria-Theresa to Frederick, 191. 

Silesian wars, the, 190-192. 

Silvio Pellico in prison, 133. 

Smith, William, and the hinterland, 
10. 

Sociology and Evolution, 170. 

Socrates and his Daemon, 100. 

Soissons, commander of, and treach- 
ery, in. 

Solferino, battle of, 180-182. 

Sorel, 27. 

Soult: in Spain, 88; ingratitude of, 
118; swears allegiance to Louis 
XVIIL, ib. 

Sources of period 1810-1815, 84. 

South Africa and a hinterland, 9. 



248 



INDEX 



Spain: French peace with (1795), 
47; Napoleon's appreciation of, 55 ; 
hatred of, for Napoleon, 68; Well- 
ington in, 87, 88; Napoleon recalls 
troops from, 90; and France, alli- 
ance of (1805), 92; encouraged by 
England, 98; England engaged 
in, in; causes of decadence, 136; 
fight of, for Ferdinand VII., ib.; re- 
establishment of Inquisition in, ib. ; 
resistance of, to Napoleon, ib.; 
under Ferdinand VII., ib. ; unwise 
resistance of, to Napoleon, ib.; 
revolutions in, 156. 

Spanish: Succession, war of, inter- 
national, 5; view of Napoleon's 
fall, 73; resistance to Napoleon, 
80, 91, 92, 217; and French, 88; 
account of Peninsular War, 89; 
guerilla war, 90; attitude, impor- 
tance of, 91 ; and English interests 
opposed, 93; American colonies, 
revolt of, 93, 135; and Austrian 
Germans, 224. 

Spencer, Herbert: a follower of 
Comte, 168; on Evolution, 170. 

Spielberg, prison of, 133. 

Spinoza: and the Encyclopedic, 19; 
philosophy of, 148. 

Stahl on law, 165. 

Stamp Act of 1765, 7. 

Starhemberg, Count, and Habsburgs, 

IS- 

Stein and Prussian efficiency, 82, 193. 

Steuben and Beaumarchais, 21, 22. 

Stofiel: attache in Berlin, 209; de- 
spatches of, unopened, ib. ; on the 
Prussian army, ib.; warnings of, 
ib. 

Strauss, David, life of Jesus, 165. 

Styria, 61. 

Suchet in Spain, 88. 

Suez, boundary of, 64. 

Suffolk, witch massacres in, 43. 

Suffren, Le Bailli de, off East India, 
24. 

Suwarow : abandons Switzerland, 65 ; 
in Lombardy, ib. 

Sweden: hostile to Revolution, 40; 



joins the Coalition, 107; France 
and Westphalian peace, 186. 
Switzerland abandoned by Suwarow, 

65. 
Sybel and French Revolution, 27. 
Syria: and Egypt, invasion of, 63; 

attacked by Napoleon, 64. 
Szechenyi: outcome of Hungarian 

revolution, 161; reforms of, 162, 

163. 

Tabor, Mount, Napoleon's victory 
at, 65. 

Taine and French Revolution, 27. 

Tallard and Blenheim campaign, 56. 

Talleyrand: and German reform, 67, 
68; and Austerlitz, 72; intrigues 
of, against Napoleon, 116; a great 
statesman, 129; and Alexander I., 
ib. ; and decision of Congress on 
voting, ib.; and Humboldt, ib.; 
and Metternich, ib. ; upholds legiti- 
macy, 130; master of Congress, 
130, 131. 

Talma, 83. 

Taxation of colonists, not oppressive, 

7- 

Tennyson and Idealism, 7. 

" Terreur, La," 44. 

Territorial unity and peace, 5. 

Themistocles : and Napoleon, 52; 
and Athens, 193. 

Thiebault, memoirs of, 80, 126. 

Thiers: Louis Philippe yields to, 159; 
Quinet, etc., realize Bismarck's 
aims, 207; on Germany, 209; 
leader of the peace party, 217; pro- 
posals of, impossible, ib. ; seeks 
foreign help, ib. 

Thirty Years' War: strategy of, 56; 
compared to the reaction, 138; 
effetcs of, 187. 

Tiers- Elat convened, 35. 

Tilsit, treaty of, 82. 

Tirolese resistance, 90, 98. 

Tocqueville and French Revolution, 
27. 

Tolentino, peace at, with Pius VI., 
62. 



INDEX 



249 



Toulouse: on strategic line, 89; 
Wellington at, 90, 116. 

Townshend: his taxes, 7; policy of, 
discussed, 12. 

Trafalgar: and Austerlitz, 72; battle 
of, 86. 

Treves, Archbishop of, possessions of, 
186. 

Trocadero, victorious march of French 
to, 136, 137. 

Tronchet and Napoleon, 69. 

Troppau, Congress at, 134. 

" Trop tard, Sire," 75. 

Turgot: and colonial secession, 10; 
removes abuses, 27; political writ- 
ings of, 31. 

Turin, 25. 

Turkey and Charles X., 156. 

Turkish: Empire and Napoleon, 102 ; 
fleet destroyed at Navarino, 141. 

Turks: in Constantinople, 134; re- 
volt of Greeks from, 139; a noble 
race, 140; according to Bismarck, 
ib.; retaliation of, 141. 

Tyler on Evolution, 170. 

Tyrol, Kuf stein prison in, 133. 

Ulm: Napoleon at, 54; campaign, 
problem of, 56; campaign, 75-78. 

Unigenitus, the Bull, 31. ■ 

United States: and England, 25; 
peace policy of, discussed, 78; 
monarchy in, impossible, 107; 
England engaged in, in; of Eu- 
rope impossible, 223. 

ValladolH 1 , 88, 89. 

Valmy, cannonade of, 38, 43. 

Valois, power of, over bourgeoisie, 117. 

Varennes, postmaster of, 40. 

Venetian Republic : ceded to Austria, 
62 ; and Napoleon, 66. 

Venetian territory: retained by Aus- 
tria, 180; secured by Victor Em- 
manuel, 181; lost by Austria, 206; 
obtained by Italy, ib. 

Vergennes: neglect of, 2; and colo- 
nial secession, 10; and Beaumar- 
chais, 21; foreign minister, 27. 



Vergniaud, 43- 

Verona: fortress of, reduced, 61; 
Congress at, 134. 

Veronese massacre French sick, 89. 

Versailles, Parliament at, 35. 

Victor Emmanuel II.: gets Lom- 
bardy, 180; declared King of Italy, 
181; defeated by Austria, ib.; de- 
feats of, ib.; secures Venetian terri- 
tory, ib. 

Vienna: Congress of, 6, 121, 128, 192; 
and Bourges, 38; Napoleon near, 
61; entered by Napoleon, 76; 
amusements at, 131; Congress of, 
effects of, 177; and Bismarck, 205, 
206; and the Prussians, ib. 

Vilagos, surrender of Gorgei at, 163. 

Villa Franca, peace of, 180. 

Vivian, Lord: acknowledges Anglo- 
Dutch debt to Prussia, 123; com- 
mands Wellington's left, ib. 

Vogt, Carl, teacher of Materialism, 
170. 

Voltaire, 18. 

Wagram: campaign and Napoleon, 
57; effect of, on Tirolese, 90; cam- 
paign of, 96. 

Walcheren: expedition and Napo- 
leon, 57; English in, 96, 97. 

Wales and England, union of, 
185. 

Walewska, Madame de, and Napo- 
leon, 81. 

Wandering Jew, the, a national crea- 
tion, 153. 

War Party: influence of, 41; under 
Girondists and Dumouriez, ib. 

Washington, 22. 

Waterloo: defeat of Napoleon at, 25, 
127; and Marengo, 67; battle of, 
87; varying accounts of, 122, 123; 
campaign of, 122-127; English 
pride in, 123; historians of various 
nations on, ib. ; and Bannockburn, 
etc., 123, 124; real features of, 124; 
truth important re, ib.; and Leip- 
sic, relative importance of, 125; 
Napoleon's French opponents en- 



250 



INDEX 



couraged by, ib. ; and Wavre, battles 
of, 125, 127; Wellington at, 126, 
127. 

Wavre: and Waterloo, battles of, 125; 
Blucher at, 126, 127; Grouchy re- 
mains at, 127. 

Wellington: and Napoleon, 59, 88, 
89, 91 ; and Napoleon's fall, 72, 73; 
and Blucher defeat Napoleon, 87; 
limitations of activity of, ib.; and 
Peninsular War, 87, 88; and 
Cuesta win Talavera, strategical 
defeat, 88; and Salamanca, ib.', 
Cartaxo despatch of, ib.; ignores 
Soult, ib.; forced by Massena re- 
tires behind Torres Vedras, 88, 89; 
leaves wounded and baggage at 
Talavera, 88 ; slow progress of, 
in Spain, 89 ; strategy of, in Penin- 
sula, ib. ; enters France, 90; and 
Frederick the Great, 91 ; and Gus- 
tavus Adolphus, ib. ; and Marl- 
borough, ib. ; at Toulouse, 116; 
on La Haie Sainte, 122 ; at Quatre- 
Bras, 125, 126; and Blucher, junc- 
tion of, necessary, 125 sqq. ; defeats 
Ney, 126; fails to help Blucher, 
ib.; concentrated before Waterloo, 
126, 127, 



West Indies : convoy enters Brest, 47 ; 
and French Crown, 99. 

Westphalian Peace, the, 186. 

White Mountain, battle of, 24. 

Wieland, language of, 188. 

William I. of Prussia: and Bismarck, 
194; as the sole founder of modern 
Germany, 196; occasionally reluc- 
tant to follow Bismarck, 199; op- 
poses war with Austria, 203 ; Bene- 
detti sent to interview, 211; and 
Grammont, 211, 212; and Bene- 
detti at Ems, 212; reply of, tam- 
pered with, ib.; reply of, to Bene- 
detti, ib.; and Empire, 218. 

Witches massacred in English Civil 
War, 42, 43- 

Wurmser, defeat of, 61. 

Wiirtemberg: and Napoleon, inter- 
ests coincident, 114; apprehensions 
of, 130; Bavaria and Baden, 207, 
208; joins Prussia, 215. 

Wiirtzburg Bishop, possessions of , 186. 

York's, Duke of, hasty retreat, 87. 
Young, Arthur, and French peasan- 
try, 29. 

Zurich, battle of, 65, 



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